The conference that Chris went to in Reykjavik in May was held in the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center building. It’s rather new, as  it opened in 2011, and won a big architectural design award in 2013.  The driver on the shuttle we took from the airport was particularly proud of it. He told us the history of it as we drove by, and  I think he may have even gone (or wanted to go) to the opening concert in 2011.

Harpa is certainly a striking building: it’s huge and glass and very modern. But yet to me it also seems completely out-of-place in its surroundings, at least at the moment.  According to Wikipedia, it was supposed to be the center piece of a brand new big development near the harbor in Reykjavik, but then recession hit, and the project was abandoned. The concert hall  stood half-finished for several years until government funding was provided to complete its construction.

Here’s some information from the official Harpa website on the design:

Harpa has captured the myth of a nation – Iceland – that has consciously acted in favour of a hybrid-cultural building during the middle of the ongoing Great Recession. The iconic and transparent porous ‘quasi brick’ appears as an ever-changing play of coloured light, promoting a dialogue between the city of Reykjavik and the building’s interior life.

Oddly enough, though, since it was usually gray or about-to-be gray when we were in Reykjavik at the end of May,  my impression was more that it was a rather dark and dreary building, rather a colorful one. But as I looked through my photos of it today and adjusted some of the brightness and contrast in them, the grayness dropped away, revealing a few more colorful accents on the window panes.  Just as with other photos from that trip, my photos make the Harpa Hall a little prettier than it seemed to me at the time.  Truly, the light was not as clear,  nor was the sky ever as blue in person as it is in the photos today; I should note, thought, that I have not colorized any of the sky or the windows.

The photos also don’t give a clue it was always very cold and very windy to walk around that building. It was usually rather drizzly, too.  But of course I didn’t take photos when it was raining; those few moments when the rain drops stopped, and the clouds ever-so-briefly rolled by, were necessarily the moments when I pulled l my camera out of the bag as I was walking around Reykjavik.

So, enjoy this slightly improved-on-real-life look at Reykjavik’s premier piece of architecture, the Harpa (Concert Hall and Conference Center), and its surroundings.