Frumkvöðlasetur og veitingastaður / Entrepreneurship offices and restaurant

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Við Nauthólsvík reisti herinn braggabyggð ásamt öðrum mannvirkjum upp úr síðari heimsstyrjöld. Þá starfaði í byggðinni hótelið Hotel Winston sem hýsti flugáhafnir á leið milli Evrópu og Norður-Ameríku.

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Talsverður fjöldi af Breskum og Bandarískum bröggum byggðist hérlendis um stríðsárin en þessi tiltekni braggi við Nauthólsvík er sá eini sem eftir stendur á sínum upprunalega stað. Allir aðrir braggar hafa verið rifnir eða fluttir annað víðsvegar um landið.

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Húsnæðisvandinn á höfuðborgarsvæðinu eftir stríð olli því að autt húsnæði sem herinn skildi eftir sig varð varanlegt heimili þeirra sem höfðu ekki úr öðrum tækifærum að velja. Braggarnir voru húsnæði sem hafði verið reist í flýti og með tímabundna nýtingu í huga. Þeir voru því hrjáðir af raka, kulda og lélegum loftgæðum. Íbúarnir þjáðust því af skertum lífsgæðum og skömm þar sem litið var niður á þau af samfélaginu. Þessi staða braggabyggðanna í menningarminninu og tímabundið eðli þeirra hefur að öllum líkindum ollið því þeir hafa lengst af ekki þótt hafa mikið varðveislugildi og þar af leiðandi ekki haldið við.

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Reykjavíkurborg ákvað hinsvegar að ráðast í að gera upp þennan bragga og tvö hús sem eru viðloðandi hann. Í sjálfum bragganum er veitingastaður og frumkvöðlasetur ásamt fyrirlestrasal í byggingunum við hann. Vegna ástands braggans þurfti að endurreisa hann en steinsteyptir endaveggir hans og inngangur haldast upprunalegir. Form og skali bygginganna hafa haldist upprunaleg. Dagný Helgadóttir landslagsarkitekt sá um hönnun lóðarinnar.

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The barrack and surrounding buildings were built just after World War II and served as a transit camp for aircraft crews that were flying between America and Europe and was called Hotel Winston.

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We had a lot of British and American barracks built in Iceland by the allied forces and this barrack is the last one who is actually still on its original plot. All other barracks have either been torn down or moved somewhere else within the country.

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During the years following the end of World War II, Reykjavik suffered a housing crisis due to people increasingly moving from the countryside and into the capital. The crisis forced many families to move into the vacant military barracks. Only ever meant as temporary housing, the barracks were fraught with problems regarding heating, ventilation, humidity and hygiene. The inhabitants suffered, and their way of life was a source of shame in society. Those bad memories as well as their temporary nature meant that the barracks were not considered of much importance to society. Those bad memories as well as their temporary nature meant that the barracks were not considered of much importance to Iceland’s cultural and architectural heritage and therefore not maintained.

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Reykjavik city decided to renovate this barrack and two other
houses attached to the barrack. The barrack is a restaurant and the two attached houses serve as a small lecture room and entrepreneurship offices for the University of Reykjavik.

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The barrack had to be rebuilt because of poor condition but we managed to keep the headboard wall and the old entrance attached to the wall. The shape and the scale is exactly the same as it originally was. We tried to be as loyal to the origin of the houses as possible, taking notice by today’s building regulation.

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In our team was the landscape designer Dagný Helgadóttir. She took the profile of the barrack and projected it on the ground to form seating facilities. She used the original cover of the barrack to form the shape of the seating. When designing of the plot, we tried to use as much as possible of the original material which had not been used for the buildings.

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