The project for the Akureyri Student Residences, in its conception, responds to the strengths and limitations of its site and its adaptation to the program, resulting in a sustainable co-living model for fostering and stimulating new relationships and spaces of activity for students, visitors and staff. We sought to define a catalyzing element of activities by its positioning and by the definition of the interstitial spaces, a unifying gesture that blurs indoor/outdoor boundaries.
The buildings spread and drop with the topography and slides to maximize sun exposure.
Despite the large size to accommodate the program, we wanted to minimize its presence on the street, breaking the volumes to a more fragmented scale, as if of a composition of smaller dwellings.
This way, instead of resorting to large (and costly) excavations and retention of land, its shape leans on the existing terraces for greater enrichment of programmatic distribution: the separation by recessed floors along the existing topography establishes an inherent privacy hierarchy of the spaces with respect to the circulation and living of the inhabitants.