Drangar  

Drangar is a large estate in Skógarströnd on the northern coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula including a handful of islands in the Breiðfjörður archipelago. Until recently it was a working farm with a motley collection of buildings, built in the early eighties, according to standard, state issue, blueprints. When the present owners acquired the property, it was in a decrepit state of repair and some buildings had even collapsed of their own accord.

The remaining structures were the farmhouse, tractor shed, hay-tower and cowshed and barn. The house was in the best condition and, sporting a dormer of absurd proportions, it was the most unique of the four. Its renovation will be part of a later phase. The hay-tower is slowly disintegrating and will be allowed to continue doing so.

The tractor shed and cowshed and barn were simple buildings, built swiftly and cheaply for agricultural use. It’s a typology that’s found on countless farms around the country serving the practical needs of farmers and their animals. However, when farms started to augment their income by modifying these structures into tourist accommodation the raw charm was often lost in the process. This observation reinforced the belief in the principle of memory.

The machine shed was an uninsulated concrete shell with an earth floor, a sump pit and a tin roof. Its size was perfect for four guest rooms and a communal sitting/dining area. Two of the guestrooms are equipped with micro-kitchens and a door in the central corridor allows the building to be split into three independent units. A spiral concrete stair leads from the entrance lobby to a laundry and plant room in the former sump.

The primary materials of the interior are the original rough-cast concrete and a new terrazzo floor offset by bespoke oak carpentry. The interior walls of the communal spaces are anonymous white, but the guest rooms pay homage to the previous use with glossy walls and ceilings in the livery of Kubota, New Holland, John Deere and Massey Ferguson farm machinery. Each room has a bathroom tiled with an aquatic blue mosaic. The shed is wrapped in corrugated copper sheeting that changes from brown through aubergine to Spanish green depending on the whims of the weather and sea spray. The side doors and fenestration mimic the original shed and the main tractor door has been replaced by a sliding window connecting the communal area to a broad terrace overlooking the fjord.

The walls of the cowshed were brutally weathered externally and insulated internally with polystyrene permeated with the moisture and odour of its former use. The tin roof had an insubstantial timber structure and more polystyrene. The concrete floor was punctuated with steel grilles and concrete slats over an undercroft that was full to the ceiling with fermenting dung. The adjacent barn was less contaminated but programmatically awkward. It was split by a tall concrete wall into two, long, hay bays and although the ceiling height was considerable it wasn’t enough to accommodate two storeys.

To preserve the original character many of the new functions were inserted within the existing concrete walls as independent volumes and surfaces that had been previously clad in corrugated tin were reclad in corrugated copper, rolled locally with the original profile. Where the landscape was adjusted to align with the new functions it was done with the minimum of earth movement. Some new concrete elements were added but they all share the honest vocabulary and imprecise building technique of the original. The most complex structural change, new foundations, are now under a terrazzo floor.

The undercroft now houses a communal kitchen and bathroom facilities for campers as well as storage and technical areas. On the floor above eight bovine themed guestrooms are accessed from a covered perimeter walkway. The original openings were maintained, and they frame long vistas to the surrounding mountains and fjord while providing shelter for the users and rooms within. Technical services are located in an attic.

The roof of the barn was raised, and the owner’s apartment inserted on an upper floor. A private terrace is carved into the roof of the cow shed and on the opposite side a new bridge connects the apartment to the adjacent promontory, doubling as a canopy for the formal entrance. Private access is from the car port at the south end of the barn. The remainder of the ground floor is a common area with catering facilities for the guests that extends out to a generous, north facing, terrace to enjoy the midnight sun or aurora borealis reflected in the fjord.

The materiality and detailing of the cowshed and barn are a continuation of that used in the tractor shed. However, in the owner’s apartment the palette is enhanced with bush hammered basalt, fine grained marble and corrugated oak.

When it was impossible to leave original material in-situ it was reused and repurposed. For instance, the manure was spread over the fields as an organic fertiliser and all earth movement retained on-site. The concrete slats of the cowshed floor are now the paving of the northern terrace and the grilles have become headboards in the bedrooms and external seating. Dining tables have been made from original roof timbers and corrugated tin was used as shuttering for new concrete walls.

The buildings are all heavily insulated with rockwool produced in Iceland using grid electricity from hydro and geothermal sources. As there are no geothermal sources nearby heat is extracted from the surrounding fields using closed-loop heat pump systems that serve all heating and domestic hot water needs. Pure fresh water is from an on-site borehole with a reservoir for emergency fire use. The location may be remote, 30km from the nearest surfaced road, but a fiber-optic cable seamlessly connects it to the global internet.

Client : Johanna H. Sigurðardottir & Jon Zimsen
Architects : Studio Granda
Structural & environmental Engineers : Viðsjá
Electrical Engineers : VJÍ
Fire consultants : Efla
Contractor : Skipavík

Further reading...

Awards
Awarded the Icelandic Design Award 2020
nominated for The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2022

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