My hotel room overlooks the building site of the new Icelandic Opera – well actually its called the Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre but everyone refers to it as the new opera. Its an impressive building that is due to be opened in 82 days. What I find fascinating is the scale of the project. The concert hall will seat 1800 people which seems large considering the population of a Iceland is about 320,000 (Wikipedia). But is this excessive? The population of the capital city is around 120,000 (and over 200,000 in the Greater Reykjavík Area) (Wikipedia).
The new opera house
While digitalization and the Internet have killed (or wounded) some traditional national vanity projects: national encyclopedias and dictionaries have been hit very hard. Buildings remain ever popular methods of attempting to raise the national image (Oslo recently completed a gorgeous new opera house) and this new opera will be a fascinating building.