The Snow Trap Sweden, Gällivare Architecture, Swedish Design, Images, Arkitekter
The Snow Trap, Sweden : Gällivare Building
The Snow Trap Gällivare – design by Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB
9 Aug 2010
The Snow Trap
Architect: Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB
Location: Gällivare, Sweden
Snöfällan – The Snow Trap
In Vietasjåkk, the climate is a mighty force. The snow comes early and leaves late. The arctic wind drives it into drifts that make the winter terrain completely different from the summer. The landscape is recreated anew each year. Even in summer, nature remembers the winter. And this building remembers the snowstorm—even on the days when the ground is carpeted in the pale purple flowers of the moss campion.
The forces of nature that sculpted the Stuor Muorkke, or Great Lake Falls region, have brought forth a simple, rounded form. The snow’s ability to fill every pocket in the lee of the wind is exploited here to create a building with a memory.
In winter, the central courtyard quickly fills to the brim with snow. This snow trap becomes the primary attraction of the interior in early spring; the glass walls reveal a cross-section of sedimentary layers of snowfall.
Behind the cold glass of the untempered entrance hall, visitors can track the changes in the snowpack as though in a laboratory. The building’s outer shell consists of massive blocks of wood stacked in a ring, and broad gaps between the blocks catch drifting snow, inviting it to become part of the façade. The seemingly simple building form thus becomes a snow sculpture enlivened by the passing seasons, and those seasons become essential to the building’s raison d’être.
The extreme conditions that have shaped Snöfällan are the same that once shaped the building traditions of the Laplanders. Not that the two are similar—but they indeed spring from the same foundations.
The Snow trap Gällivare images / information from Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB
Location: Gällivare, Sweden, northeast Europe
Architecture in Sweden
Swedish Architecture Designs – chronological list
Architecture Walking Tours by e-architect
Swedish Architecture Walking Tours
Another Swedish building designed by Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB:
Swedish Architecture – Selection
Novum BioCity
Christensen&Co Arkitekter
Novum BioCity Stockholm
Lidingo houses
Tham & Videgård Hansson Architects
Stockholm Home
Archipelago House, Stockholm archipelago
Tham & Videgård Hansson Architects
Swedish house
Comments / photos for the The Snow trap Gällivare page welcome