The expansion of the School of Nursing and Health Care Practice involves two new built wings – a main wing, which runs parallel with the existing centre, and a transverse connecting wing. Containing the main entrance and a small library, the connecting wing appears as a bridge in the landscape. 

The bridge juts out from the main wing and highlights the meeting of the two volumes. Designed as a light and open construction of glass and larch, it is a transparent structure that connects the original building with the new main building.

The main building contains a lecture hall, teaching rooms and meeting rooms at entrance level, and a canteen facility and teachers’ offices in the lower ground floor. The main wing features a solid base façade and a lightweight superstructure clad with painted wood. Wood and glass dominate throughout. While wood gestures back to Greenlandic building traditions, glass is the modern European material of choice. Heritage, modernity, Greenland and Europe wrapped into one.

Facts/

Architects
schmidt hammer lassen architects

Client
Greenland’s Home Rule: Directorate for Housing & Infrastructure, Nuuk

Area
1,250 m² 

Construction sum
€ 3.9 million excl. VAT

On commission
2000 

Status
Construction period 2003 - 2004

Engineer
NIRAS A/S

Contractor
MT Højgaard 

Awards
2008, Commended in Architectural Award of the Municipality of Nuuk’s External Council of Development