This new building by Henning Larsen Architects bridges a small river in the village of Norðragøta on the Faroe Islands and symbolically builds a bridge between two formerly separate communities, which in 2009 were merged to form the town of Eysturkommuna. The town council chamber is in the highest part of the building, directly over the middle of the river. At the centre of the floor a glazed circular opening offers a view of the water below. Externally, too, the roughly L-shaped building strives for maximum contact to the surrounding landscape, while also referring to the traditional building methods used in local farmhouses with their grass roofs and black wood cladding. Like in these models the roof of the new building consists of two layers of grass sods, which were laid on the roof membrane without any additional drainage layer. They are held in place by just a synthetic net as an intermediate layer. A paved public route in the grass leads across the roof, offering pedestrians an alternative to the nearby road bridge.
In structural terms the town hall is a reinforced concrete and steel construction hybrid. Most of the loadbearing walls are at the centre of the building, while placing the steel frame behind the facades allowed large ribbon windows to be made. The bridge forming the floor of the council hall consists of double-T beams combined with a reinforced concrete slab. The closeness to the water is also the theme of a light and sound installation conceived for the town hall by artist Jens Ladekarl Thomsen. Loudspeakers mounted on the inside of the facade use the glass windows and the timber cladding as an acoustic membrane. After fall of darkness they fill the surroundings with the sounds of the crashing sea, the river flowing past and other soundtracks that Thomsen recorded on site. Parallel to this moving images are projected onto the walls inside and can be seen through the windows.
If the Eysturkommuna council has its way the bridge building by Henning Larsen Architects is just the start of something bigger: in the years to come a small shop and business complex is to be built to the east of the town hall as a genuine centre for the newly founded community.
