While the ultimate fate of Perlan is still unknown, one architect believes one of the more popular ideas – to turn the restaurant into a hotel – would be a mistake.
As reported, last December Reykjavík Energy (OR) issued a statement of willingness to sell Perlan to a group of investors looking to build a 300-room hotel on the property. The decision was met with statements of protest from the city council minority.
While the final decision is still up in the air, RÚV reports that architect Hjörleifur Stefánsson and designer Sigríður Þráinsdóttir would rather see the building be made into a museum of natural history.
Hjörleifur argues that “Perlan has a great deal of symbolic meaning for Reykjavík, and is visited by many tourists. It is actually connected to this special natural world of Iceland’s, of which Reykjavík is a part. It is symbolic of the one capital city in the world that is heated with geothermically heated water, and so closely connected to nature,” referring to the water tanks on top of which Perlan sits.
At the same time, Hjörleifur points out that Icelanders, despite the wonders of the natural world around them, have yet to create a truly proper natural history museum. Therefore, Perlan would be the ideal location.
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