National Gallery of Greenland
BIG + TNT Nuuk + Ramboll Nuuk + Arkitekti is the winning team to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country’s capital Nuuk, among invited proposals totaling 6 Nordic architects.
Located on a steep slope overlooking the most beautiful of Greenland’s fjords, the 3000 m2 National Gallery will serve
as a cultural and architectural icon for the people of Greenland. The new museum will combine historical and
contemporary art of the country in one dynamic institution The winning proposal was selected by a unanimous
museum board among 6 proposals, including Norwegian Snøhetta, Finnish Heikkinen‐Komonen, Islandic Studio
Granda and Greenlandic Tegnestuen Nuuk.
“The Board has a clear vision: to work for the establishment of an internationally oriented highly professional
institution that communicates the continuous project of documenting and developing the Greenlandic national identity
through art and culture. Our dream is a national gallery where historic and contemporary art meets circumpolar
pieces, Nordic and world art in general. Our dream is an institution that stimulates our curiosity, awake our excitement
with its thought‐provoking design and where we all feel at home. Selecting a prominent architect as BIG, I am sure that
our chances of realizing that dream are good”, Tuusi Josef Motzfeldt, Greenland’s National Gallery of Art.
As a projection of a geometrically perfect circle on to the steep slope, the new gallery is conceived as a courtyard
building that combines a pure geometrical layout with a sensitive adaption to the landscape. The three‐dimensional
imprint of the landscape creates a protective ring around the museum’s focal point, the sculpture garden where
visitors, personnel, exhibition merge with culture and nature, inside and outside.
“The Danish functionalistic architecture in Nuuk is typically square boxes which ignore the unique nature of Greenland.
We therefore propose a national gallery which is both physically and visually in harmony with the dramatic nature, just
like life in Greenland is a symbiosis of the nature. We have created a simple, functional and symbolic shape, where the
perfect circle is supplied by the local topography which creates a unique hybrid between the abstract shape and the
specific location”, Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner, BIG.
