Of and for the indigenous land and peoples: Qaammat Pavilion by Konstantin Arkitekter

Indigenous peoples and ethnic communities across the globe, from the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region to the Maori of New Zealand, have perpetually upheld their culture of being steadfastly one with nature — worshipping it, being gracious for its providence, learning from it and giving back to it in their endeavours and lifestyles. The erasure and devaluing of their culture, presence, perspectives, and practices have done irreparable damage, their contributions and learnings are taken for granted, or typically stereotyped and sadly, ridiculed. Even in the face of this prolonged, discriminating reduction, indigenous peoples worldwide have strived, to display resilience by remaining true to themselves, preaching and living their olden philosophies with pride. Etching spiritual connections with vast landscapes and changing seasons, theirs is a community that unabashedly and collectively, ties in the natural world with humans, understanding our small part in nature, instead of presiding over or ruthlessly exploiting it. In a similar thread, Swedish architect Konstantin Ikonomidis poses a pertinent question with the glassy and gestural Qaammat Fjeld pavilion in Greenland, an ethereal landmark built to, for, and in collaboration with the indigenous locals of Sarfannguit, Greenland—“What relation do we have to nature, landscape and sky, through our experience and cultures?”

Designed to celebrate and promote the Inuit’s intangible cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of the environment, the Qaammat pavilion stands as a roofless, open hymn to the skies and immense craggy terrain it rests upon, where glass meets rock. Conceived and built by Ikonomidis, founder of Konstantin Arkitekter in cooperation with Qeqqata Kommunia (the Qeqqata Municipality), the pavilion design is located in Sarfannguit, a cultural landscape in West Greenland, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2018. (Greenland is almost 90 per cent Inuit or European-Inuit.) “The Fjeld pavilion is designed as a poetic and aesthetic object, but most importantly, as a symbolic gesture acknowledging the natural site and rich history, the distinctiveness of the Greenlandic culture, and the spiritual sensibilities rooted in Sarfannguit,” shares Ikonomidis, whose works bridge the territories of art, architecture and scientific research, with a special interest in extreme climates.

A striking lack of ornamentation defines the pavilion which is at once, deific, powerful, and magnetic, articulated in stillness as two curved walls of glass bricks, in an almost embrace. Ikonomidis intended to reflect the lives, stories, and built traditions of the Sarfannguit locals, for the pavilion to stand for what they stood for. His in-depth interaction with the community essayed learning about their relationship with nature, what it meant to them, and its significance. He relays that the massive difference in scale, of the installation to its site, imitates the contrast between the 100-or-so community with the mighty mountains and waterbody. The meek size of the icy glass form against the solidity of the rock symbolised that contrast perfectly, and our own vulnerability to nature, as mentioned in their local mythology, posing inquiry as much as it answers and stands as a veneration, a celebration of the land and its people.

The Fjeld pavilion is designed as a poetic and aesthetic object, but most importantly, as a symbolic gesture acknowledging the natural site and rich history, the distinctiveness of the Greenlandic culture, and the spiritual sensibilities rooted in Sarfannguit. – Konstantin Ikonomidis, Founder, Konstantin Arkitekter

The curved walls of the contextual architecture are made of opaque glass bricks attached to metal poles that are anchored to the rock, inspired by the local house-building techniques of the locals. With two narrow openings, Qaammat remains open, inviting visitors into an intimate atmosphere that sets dialogue with the wider landscape. The changing seasons and days shift the experience and appearance of the pavilion subtly, sometimes a dreamy blue, other times icy, or glowing yellow. When viewed from various angles, one encounters transparency or opacity, texture and smoothness, the form seemingly absorbing light or reflecting it, while transitioning inside the pavilion, or around it.

Scripting poetry with the natural landscape, Qaammat opened to the public on October 2021. Its cinematic location is characterised by the two fjords that meet on Sarfannguit’s eastern tip on the hills, carefully chosen by the local community, site manager Paninnguaq Fleischer-Lyberth and Ikonomidis, ‘for its impressive view over the Sarfannguit municipality’. Set on the planned trail between Sarfannguit and Nipisat, this site-specific installation will serve as a landmark and a gathering point and dissemination site in Sarfannguit, where the World Heritage site’s beautiful surroundings can be experienced by locals and visitors to the village.

The Swedish architect has been researching and documenting remote landscapes in Greenland, exploring the subject of what makes a house a home, its immaterial aspects and meaning, and its symbols returning to the humbler task of understanding, rather than reforming. Since 2019, Konstantin is developing a design-build cultural project, located on a UNESCO World Heritage site in Sarfannguit, Greenland. He has also played a key role in the development of a prototype housing that seeks to prevent the transmission of malaria-borne diseases in tropical areas of Sub-Saharan Africa.

In conversation with STIR, Ikonomidis recounts his experience of conceiving the Qaammat Pavilion over a period of two years, exploring, and studying the site and interacting with the locals to create its form as a celebration of the landscape, as well as the culture of the Inuit community.

Jincy Iype: What does Qaammat mean, and signify? What can you tell us about the conspicuous influence of the site on the project?

Konstantin Ikonomidis: The word ‘Qaammat’ means ‘moon’ in Kalaallisut, the Greenlandic Inuit language, specifically the West Greenlandic dialect, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of Greenland. It signifies the lights and reflections of the moon and the impact on our surroundings. The design draws inspiration from the moon (Qaammat) and the marvellous Arctic light, in combination with the snow’s impressions on the landscape. Nature, I believe, gives us a sense of harmony and power when we are in its midst, surrounded by tall, wild mountains with glacier-topped peaks, but it also exposes us to our own vulnerability.

One of the more significant features of UNESCO's Aasivissuit-Nipisat Heritage site is the extraordinary cairn systems, a Greenlandic ‘inussuk,’ a manufactured monument in an open environment. The idea and location of Qaammat are inextricably tied to the traditions of the local heritage, adding and speaking to the landscape, and it seeks to serve as both a reverence to the historical ‘inussuk,’ and as a modern landmark for the newly announced UNESCO World Heritage Site. The choice of the site was guided by a strong desire to respect nature and find a balance within the extraordinary landscape. The pavilion seeks to embrace a sensitivity towards nature, something that is extraordinarily instilled in the local culture. Qaammat establishes a subtle presence by blurring the physical boundary between a man-made structure, and the natural terrain and context.

The pavilion is literally anchored in the rocky terrain. Drilled into the ground with 40-mm holes, the foundation is constructed with rock anchors in the exact same way that every typical house in the settlement is. Attached to the upper part of the metal poles is a custom-made stainless steel bracket with a circular geometry. The metal bar is fully horizontal and the poles vary in length according to the terrain. The curving walls, constructed in glass blocks, form a linear pathway open at both ends, which serves as a spiritual gateway to the pavilion. One of the more distinctive features of the structure is its glass ‘shell’, its play of transparencies, scale and weight, resulting in a feeling of surreality. The Qaammat pavilion can simultaneously alter the viewer’s perspective, merge, and even vanish into the surrounding topography.

An important part of the design phase was site-specific research. Following my earlier work and research on the subject of 'home', I focused on my interest in integrating landscape, culture and human stories into the design. Marked by encounters, conversations and interviews with the locals, my intention was to poetically reflect these experiences, stories and myths in the physical design of the pavilion.

Jincy: Who is the client and what was their brief to you?

Konstantin: The client was the Qeqqata Municipality of Greenland, UNESCO World Heritage Site - Aasivissuit – Nipisat. I worked closely with Paninnguaq Fleischer Lyberth, the lead site manager of the 4,000 km UNESCO World Heritage Aasivissuit – Nipisat site between Inland Ice and sea. Her role is to preserve, develop and promote the Inuit hunting cultural landscape. I am happy to share some notes from our many conversations, about the pavilion’s intent: The site-specific installation would be a landmark for the Sarfannguit villages, the only active village in the heritage site and one of the six key sites at the newly announced UNESCO World Heritage Site. It should be located at a hiking distance from the village, at the same time visible from a distance. It would also be accessible to students, a short hike from their schools. This landmark would indicate the location of the UNESCO village for water and ice traffic, apart from demonstrating hiking routes and the beginning and endpoints for hikers.

Jincy: Could you highlight some references to the Inuit and their inhabiting natural landscape that you incorporated in the pavilion’s architecture?

Konstantin: During the early stages of my survey, I had numerous conversations with the village chairman, Aron Olsen, who shared stories and Greenlandic myths, legends, and tales that are strongly related to the Greenlandic bond with nature. Based on this, I attempted to construct their lived experiences and traditions inside a geometry, that might convey a sensation of mystery. As I comprehended his tale, I chose to work with glass to translate the immense sense of power in this natural landscape, and their relationship with it, which would also remind us of nature’s power and vulnerability.

Jincy: Why did you choose to articulate Qaammat in glass? What were some challenges encountered while employing it as the primary building material?

Konstantin: The choice to create a glass facade was a natural one due to glass's reflections, transparency, and seasonal variations in appearance, as well as its mysterious, ethereal appearance. The building’s edifice comprises glass blocks arranged in a way that forms two narrow openings, which invites the visitor to experience its intimate atmosphere and opens up to the wider landscape. There is an immense sense of power in this natural landscape, yet it also reminds us of nature’s vulnerability. Using glass as a building material ‘anchored’ in the rock translated this sensibility.

Glass was also chosen for its palpability, and its ability to highlight transparency; it camouflages the building and delineates the landscape – the pavilion inserts its presence but remains almost invisible. The interior architectural space develops an intricate relationship with the outside and provides an interesting and contemplative space, something we are not used to. While sitting inside, the viewer experiences the opaque material in combination with the sun, with the snow. The pavilion is imagined as a canvas, which will come alive by reflecting the colour palette of its surroundings – sun, snow, the different seasons, and reflections of the building’s visitors.

The glass absorbs and fluctuates light, and seen from a distance, it reflects the colours of the surroundings, the seasons, and the passing of time. Through these multitudes of reflections and abstractions on the terrain, the pavilion generates the effect of a bigger space and forms diverse experiences. The solid cast glass bricks are manufactured and partly sponsored by WonderGlass. Founded in 2013, Christian and Maurizio Mussati have built the company leveraging the bespoke glass savoir-faire, made in Venice, Italy, which encompasses lighting as well as handcrafted installations. By bonding craftsmanship with contemporary design and art, WonderGlass consistently provides tailor-made solutions to incorporate artisanal creations into projects of any scale.

The concept of using glass as the building material did present several construction challenges in the extreme climate and remote areas, without access to electricity and difficult working conditions. To construct the Qaammat pavilion, I had to understand the nature of glass as a building material, the environment, and what adhesives were specified for the likely conditions of both extreme winter and high summer, as well as forming a team from the community to help me during the construction. These were some of the conditions I had to consider to construct the pavilion— The location inside the Artic circle, with winter temperatures far below zero and frequent blizzard conditions; The remote locations that required building materials to be transported by boat, ATW and by hand; the number of smaller units of glass that would become a larger structure; The modest budget called for an imaginative concept that would still create a significant visual impact in its location; Limited and semi-skilled workforce meant the pavilion was constructed by me, supported wholeheartedly by the community; a lack of standard building solutions using cast glass as a building material; and finding an adhesive that could meet both the structural and aesthetic requirements.

Jincy: How do you keep the glass bricks from melting? What can you tell us about the construction, and the arrangement of the blocks, resulting in the circular, roofless form of the pavilion?

Konstantin: This is the interesting part. As we see and experience the pavilion, we know it is constructed with glass blocks, yet they can easily be perceived as ice. Approximately 1,200 glass blocks, each weighing 5kg, form two inclined semicircular geometries that face each other forming a diameter of 3 metres, with slender openings on both ends. The perforated glass walls stand on a custom-made stainless-steel foundation that was designed to be assembled on-site, for easy transportation. The metal foundation is fully horizontal and connected with metal poles that vary in length according to the terrain. Each pole is drilled into the ground with 40-mm holes and installed with rock anchors in the exact same way as every typical house in the settlement.

Correct, there is no roof; the structure's sloping glass walls feed out at the top. The pavilion's upper edge was designed as a straight line in my earliest sketch models. As I constructed, I began to find a balance between the terrain and the manufactured structure, with the upper portion feeding out. This, I believe, is the advantage of designing, constructing, and spending time at the location; it gives it a different feel and permits us to evaluate, and adjust as we construct. Glass blocks are available in a wide range of varieties and with distinct properties and aesthetics. The selected glass block was handcrafted in Venice, Italy, by WonderGlass. Each block is cast in a metal mould that imparts a textured surface that fluctuates the light aberration. The family-owned glass manufacturer leveraged the bespoke glass savoir-faire which encompasses lighting as well as handcrafted installations. Each of their product relies on solid traditional techniques such as blown, cast and fused glass.

All supplies were transported to the Sarfannguit settlement by boat for the contextual design. From the harbour, they were transported on ATW bikes, and the final portion, where the terrain was too rugged, was carried by hand. The custom-made steel foundation was pre-fabricated in smaller units to allow for easy transportation and assembly on-site. A portable gasoline-powered drill was used to drill 40mm holes into the terrain. After the foundation was set up, a temporary tent was built to create a better work environment and keep the adhesive from drying out in the wind.

Each block was measured in thickness using a manual calliper and categorised in groups per 0.5 mm difference in height. Double-sided structural stickers were used to hold each block in position during the adhesive's curing time before installation. Prior to bonding, each glass brick of similar height was tested on each row with a spirit level to check its levelling. The final selection of bricks was numbered to guarantee their correct bonding sequence. The bonding surface of each block was cleaned with isopropanol.

To handle the limited curing time of the adhesive we developed a productive two-person workflow with one person applying the adhesive, and the other laying each glass block. During this phase of laying the blocks, Kloe Andersen, who lives in Sarfannguit, worked with me on the pavilion contraction. This working method evolved from my previous experience working in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. There, I worked closely with local communities where different disciplines, such as health, entomology, paediatrics and architecture, collaborated on health and architectural research in communities, which sparked my interest in establishing an architectural and creative studio to challenge today's building methods and to help drive architectural innovation forward, partly through greater practical research.

Jincy: What is NEXT for you?

Konstantin: Though this is a small project, I believe it may inspire future creative constructions in the Arctic region. The project's success has been due in large part to the formation of a team comprised of individuals who are passionate about their respective fields and have been willing to share their expertise. In addition, the support of the local community, as well as adequate funding to support architectural innovations is always crucial. I am currently based in Tanzania where I am involved in establishing a bamboo production facility to promote bamboo as a construction material to the local market.

Project Details

Name: Qaammat Pavilion
Location: Sarfannguit, Greenland
Year of completion: 2021
Client: Qeqqata municipality, Greenland | UNESCO World Heritage Aasivissuit – Nipisat
Architect: Konstantin Ikonomidis, Konstantin Arkitekter
Collaborator: Sisimiut Museum (Sisimiut Katersugaasiviat)
Construction: Konstantin Ikonomidis with assistance from; Entreprenørpladsen Sisimiut, Jakob Olsen, Kloe Andressen, Faidra Oikonomopoulou, Telesilla Bristogianni, Elias Berthelsen, Esaias Berthelsen, Jan Banemann
Site Manager, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Aasivissuit – Nipisat: Paninnguaq Fleischer Lyberth
Sponsor and Patrons: Napa: The Nordic Institutet in Greenland; Dreyers Foundation; WonderGlass; Dow Inc.; R&D Glass system: TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Research on suitable adhesive for glass: Konstantin Ikonomidis in collaboration with: R&D Glass system: TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment – Faidra Oikonomopoulou and Telesilla Bristogianni with the help of Mariska van der Velden and Fred Veer