16 DIGS.NET | 7.15.2022
A
R
C
H
I
T
E
C
T
U
R
E
+
D
E
S
I
G
N
P R O F I L E | D O R T E M A N D R U P
LACEMAKING IS OF foremost importance to Dorte
Mandrup, the founder and creative director of
Danish architecture studio Dorte Mandrup A/S and
Monocle's architect of the year. Her repertoire of
highly contextual works includes a growing number
of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Among these
is the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, an extraordinary framework for
exploring the story of ice, culture and climate change in one of
the world's most vulnerable and affected environments. In going
to the ends of the earth for this project—about 150 miles north
of the Arctic Circle, to be specific— the studio completed one
of its most ambitious and socially sustainable buildings to date.
A modern building in ancient terrain, "The Icefjord Centre offers
a refuge in the dramatic landscape and aims to become a
natural gathering point from which you can experience the
infinite, non-human scale of the Arctic wilderness, the transition
between darkness and light, the midnight sun, and the Northern
lights dancing across the sky," says Dorte Mandrup of the
project, which is insistently sympathetic to its extraordinary
P
