Hot on the heels of their NYC news, Danish architecture firm, Bjarke Ingels Group have announced another winning proposal.

BIG, TNT Nuuk, Ramboll Nuuk and Arkitekti is the newly selected team to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country’s capital of Nuuk.

Located on a steep slope overlooking the most beautiful of Greenland’s fjords, the 3000 square metre National Gallery will serve as a cultural and architectural icon for the people of Greenland.

The winning proposal was selected by a museum board from six potential designs from firms including the Norwegian company Snøhetta, Finnish Heikkinen‐Komonen, Islandic Studio Granda and the Greenlandic Tegnestuen Nuuk.

As a projection of a perfect circle on to the steep slope, the new gallery is conceived as a courtyard building that combines a pure geometrical layout with a sensitive adaption to the landscape.

The three‐dimensional imprint of the landscape creates a protective ring around the museum’s focal point, the sculpture garden where visitors, personnel, exhibition merge with culture and nature, inside and outside.

The circular shape of the gallery enables a flexible division of the exhibition into different shapes and sizes, creating a unique framework for the museum’s art.

Visitor access to the exhibition happens through a covered opening created by a slight lift in the façade into a lobby with a 180 degree panorama view towards the sculpture garden and the fjord as well as access to the common museum functions, including ticket counters, wardrobe, boutique and a café.

“The Danish functionalistic architecture in Nuuk is typically square boxes which ignores the unique nature of Greenland." says Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner of BIG.

"We therefore propose a national gallery which is both physically and visually in harmony with the dramatic nature, just like life in Greenland is a symbiosis of the nature. We have created a simple, functional and symbolic shape, where the perfect circle is supplied by the local topography which creates a unique hybrid between the abstract shape and the specific location”.

The slope opens up the sculpture garden towards the city and the view, framing both the sculpture garden and museum functions.

A rough looking external façade of white concrete will patina over time and adjust to the local weather, while the circular inner glass façade will consist of a simple and refined frame which contrasts the rough nature and compliments the beautiful view.

Both locals and visitors will be able to admire the clear shape of the gallery which appears as a sculpture or a piece of land‐art, and it's hoped the new gallery will create more activity at the waterfront by means of an interconnected path which like the museum, forms after the shifting inclinations of the terrain.