Experiencing Harpa: Revelatory architecture and the spatial encounter

Abstract

Drawing on Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art and Art and Space, this article explores how people experience Harpa, a world-renown work of architectural art. Following partners from Henning Larsen Architects, the firm responsible for supervising the design process with the artist Olafur Eliasson, I trace the impact of spatial experience from architectural experts to people struggling to articulate their encounter, unpacking links between Harpa and the quiet transformation of tourists, the stacking of stones, and the performance of art in a space that is widely regarded as a work of art in its own right. Folding Heidegger through Harpa, the text explores art as a non-representational way of approaching phenomena that evade other forms of understanding, opening a space of revelation: an immeasurable distance in which the transcendent interconnectedness world and earth step forward.