Public
Harbour Light Pavilion
Location
Bergen, Norway
Typology
Cultural Pavilion
Year
2023
Status
Completed
Area
860 m²
Credits
Design team: Inês Maridor, Tomás Reis, Sigrid Holm · Lighting: Maridor Light · Structure: AFA Consult · Photography: Studio archive
A brick pavilion on the old harbour edge, with three deep arches that hold a reading room, a small stage and a curved wall of falling water.
The pavilion replaces a 1950s customs shed on Bergen’s inner harbour. The city asked for a public room that would stay alive through the long Nordic winter, when daylight lasts barely six hours.
Three arches, one wall of water
Three brick arches face the water. Behind them, a curved concrete wall carries a thin film of falling water lit from its base, so the sound and the reflections of the harbour come inside even when the doors are shut.
In December the pavilion is the brightest thing on the harbour — and it never uses more than a living room’s worth of light.
The brick was fired in Denmark from reclaimed clay. Every fixture is warm white at 2,400 kelvin, dimmed to a quarter of its output after ten in the evening to protect the birds that nest along the quay.
Day / Night
The same building, twelve hours apart.
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