Housing in the Arctic

Svalbard, an archipelago sited in the Arctic Ocean halfway between Norway and the North Pole, is a special and magical place. Brought in to popular consciousness through Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” and now more widely known as a frontier of research into the effects of climate change, it has long been home to mining operations, primarily to serve the Norwegian mainland.
In September of 2005, Olav Kristoffersen and Geir Brendeland were invited to Svalbard by Dag Ivar Brekke, the assistant director of the Store Norske mining company, with a view to commissioning a design for a terrace of three houses that would accommodate mining company personnel in the settlement of Longyearbyen. The most significant of these was the conception of
the terrace as a family of dwellings of varying girths.
The section across each dwelling would remain resolutely constant, while the plan width of each would serially expand to accommodate more bedrooms or give more ample living space - internal widths are 3400mm, 5000mm and 5800mm. Another factor defining the mode of dwelling was to fit three floors into a space that would normally accommodate two, through skilful manipulation of the section (the building’s roof had to align with that of adjoining buildings). This has enabled elegant double height living spaces situated at first floor level that give privileged views to a landscape punctuated with industrial relics. Bedrooms are situated on the ground and second floor. The bedrooms on the upper level are reached through a utilitarian steel stair and are entered through a leaning wall recalling a device in traditional buildings of the Sami people (an ethnic group indigenous to far northern regions of Scandinavia and Russia) from which Olav Kristoffersen is descended.