greenhouse restaurant
Jarðbaðshólar, Iceland
2020 - Shortlisted
The design for the greenhouse restaurant produces delight and surprise through the recombination of local materials and types into unexpected organizations. Greenhouses scale and repeat, turf roofs flip over, and diners are suspended above bountiful gardens. The luscious fruits and vegetables begin as imports but much of the forms and materials are local, resisting the heavy climatic impact of transporting these construction elements. Culturally there is also an interest in remixing visual and material elements found in Iceland in new ways.
The seemingly ordinary or vernacular elements reveal new possibilities through their reorganization. These include the pitch roof of the greenhouse which becomes repeated, scaled, and rotated to not just provide shelter but define dynamic space within the envelope of the building. In places, those pitched forms become repeated forming a sawtooth roof for letting summer sun in, rotated into oversized planters below, and scaled to produce smaller intimate spaces within the restaurant. Rather than remaining as a transparent envelope, the forms become clad in a way to focus views to the baths and mountains while shielding some areas of plants to be grown through controlled UV lighting, independent of the sun’s extreme cycles in Iceland. Readily available volcanic rock forms earth rammed facades with beautiful colors and striations building on the qualities of the natural landscape. The rough and deep textures contrast the typical cladding and familiar materiality of greenhouses. Further developing this recombination of local and familiar is the use of turf roofs. Here the turf rotates and allows grasses to grow from the upside-down greenhouse forms producing a furry underbelly acting as the welcoming façade to visitors entering the restaurant.
Visitors ascend along the angles of the upside-down roofs to find themselves embedded on the second floor within a dense growing environment. This middle level of the building houses the restaurant and kitchen. The irrigation and growing racks build vertically from below and seem to grow through the floor reaching up to the sawtooth roof above. Diners feel suspended within this garden which grows around them. The design of the garden allows guests to be immersed in the texture, scent, and colors of the fresh food being harvested around them. The vertical planters weave through the restaurant resisting static rows or being relegated to the perimeter but instead develop a multitude of different scaled spaces from intimate to more communal. This organization also allows for the visual overlap of several types of plants creating shifting palettes as one traverses the dining room floor. The large open kitchen invites diners curious about food harvesting and preparation to watch as the chef and cooks prepare the days meals.
