Members of the expedition: Serhii Ilchenko, Olena Ilnytska, Volodymyr, Liliia and Cyrylo Romaniuk

It seems like two persons live in each architect. The first one is an artist who can spend hours enjoying the combination of colors or game of forms. The second one is an engineer who has been working since the times when most architects dealt with fortifications.

The trip to the capital of Iceland in 2015 and the introduction to Harpa allowed illustrating perfectly such a split personality.

Harpa (Icelandic word for “harp”) is a concert and conference center in Reykjavik that resembles a huge crystal irregularly shaped. Creating Harpa, the author of the project – Icelandic artist and architect Olafur Eliasson was primarily inspired by the natural beauty of his native land. The building has the unique glass walls in the form of honeycombs with integrated LEDs that reflect and refract the outside light. Harpa opened its doors to the public in 2011.

At first glance, as an artist you are captured by the iridescent reflections in the facade shell; by variety caused by changing in lighting; by playing of light on the interiors surface. The whole time you are under the spell of the reflections of the complex glass surfaces.

Only later inside you, an engineer awakens and starts mumbling that this structure hasn’t any connections with the load-bearing piers. It lives its own life! For an engineer, Harpa is an especially fine example of the folded-plate surface which placed vertically (for some reason) and which can withstand massive winds from the North Sea.

And then you realize that this is a real magic, for sure. Otherwise, how to explain the fact that your impression from the originality of the structure is able to distract you from the question “How does it stay in its place?”.

As an architect, I know that each implemented project requires hard work with endless tests. Therefore, after research of the building of a concert hall, we went on a quest to understand “how it works”; Then, when we came across, found the working models of units which were used for construction in a nearby trench.

Every day thousands of tourists flock to Harpa – the entrance to the concert hall is free. Walking on it, be sure to stop at following: the physical model of the object that struck not only residents and guests of Reykjavik but the whole architectural community.

Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre won numerous awards, including European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.