Reykjavik - Urban Planning

i found out i stayed in a part of reykjavik called the neighborhood of gods, where all the street names are named after norse gods: thor, odin, freyja, baldur, nanna, hodr. mythology was woven into the streets. the streets tell the story of the myths in their layout. (guess which street i stayed on? loki, god of mischief of course.)

so the story goes, baldur was son of odin and frigg. he often had dreams of his own death so his mother frigg tells all the objects in the world to swear they won't hurt him. everything agreed except mistletoe. there was a game where the gods were throwing all the objects at baldur to show his invincibility. loki conspired to make a mistletoe tipped arrow, and gave it to baldur's blind brother, hadr, to shoot baldur... thereby killing him by mistake. odin sires vali to kill hadr in revenge. at baldur's funeral, nona, baldur's wife threw herself onto the funeral pyre.

in the street layout, that Baldursgata and Nonnugata intersect is hardly a coincidence, as Baldur and Nanna are husband and wife. In the same fashion, it is meaningful that Valastigur and Hadastigur lay side by side next to Baldursgata. lokastigur was named by a city council man for a street that a greedy conniving land owner lived on, it sits behind thor's street, as if cowering to thor. all these streets are located near the big church. It’s interesting to see Reykjavík after seeing the landscapes of the country. The first thing I noticed here is people can park in any direction. In america you have to park in the direction of traffic. Here you can park your can any way you want...

Secondly, the streets themselves look like woven textiles, like their wool sweaters. They make so much effort to layout cobblestones to define sidewalks and streets. It’s very intricate and designed.

The architecture is human scaled, very low lying, very fun in terms of color and form. Again like a quilt patchwork of buildings, very free and organic, yet harmonious. sometimes a discrete passageway takes you into the interior of a block, where you see communal open space like a playground for kids. open space and communal spaces are woven into block typologies.

There’s a lot of references to icelandic geological forms like basalt. The opera house facade looks like basalt crystals. It’s a 3D urban space which sometimes is reflective at times, they let everyone into the public spaces of the opera house. Inside it looks like a canyon landscape..

The church references basalt geometry too and sits on a hill like a beacon. Many streets radiate out from it and to the harbor, making navigation in the city easy, like St. Petersburg's streets which radiate out from the palace on the river....