Nyja Bíó
Nýja Bíó is a new building, reminiscent in style to the cinema, built in 1918 on the adjacent lot , that was destroyed by fire in 1998.
The cinema, Nyja Bíó, was completely razed and only drawings and photographic documentation remained. Furthermore a new building had been built on much of the old lot so the reconstruction has been made on a location slightly shifted from the original. The tighter constraints of the new plot and the increased height of its new and reconstructed neighbours influenced the decision to decrease the plan depth and increase the height by one floor. The questionable historical truthfulness of this building is not denied but expressed in the use of system shuttering for the in-situ concrete and raw finishing of the north façade in a play between notions of memory and the preoccupations of the present.
A new stair tower separates Lækjargata 2 and Nyja Bíó. It is a clearly modern intervention but with its massive columnar basalt cladding has a geological history. A smaller stone tower holds the west side of Nyja Bíó.