The Arc, that is, the "Ark" - is also a phonetic and semantic reference to the Arctic and the "archive". The construction is planned to be built at the 78th parallel of the north latitude, in the settlement of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen. The customer of the project is Arctic Memory AS. The center will talk about the state-owned World Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archives, created by the Norwegian IT company Piql, and now owned by Arctic Memory AS.
The Seed Vault contains over a million “contributions” for 6,000 plant species, with more than 70 institutions around the world participating in the project. It is an ultra-secure "bank" hidden in permafrost under a layer of rock near Longyearbyen Airport. The World Archive, which contains both private and public information of all kinds in digital form, including the work of Edvard Munch and early medieval manuscripts from the Vatican Library, is also an underground repository on Svalbard. Another member of The Arc project is the Norwegian Museum of Natural History, which is entrusted with a section on the geological past and present of this polar archipelago.
The Visitor Center consists of a lobby and exhibition building, connected by a glass corridor from where you can see the landscape, the geological formation nearby and both parts of the complex.
The lobby body, with all related functions, including a cafe, as well as production facilities for the World Archives and technical rooms, will receive a cross-laminated timber frame. The walls will be partly made of solid wood, while the outside will be covered with dark glass panels and fired planks. This building will be raised on piles so as not to melt the permafrost under it. Solar panels will be placed on the roof.
The exhibition building in the form of a concrete cocoon, on the other hand, seems to be submerged in the ground. The "layered" texture of the facade reminds of the weathering of rocks characteristic of Svalbard and of the layers of geological formations. Inside, in the outer ring-shaped space, a multimedia exposition will be placed about both vaults and their treasures. Temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius and twilight should simulate the real interior of such an Arctic "bank".
The center of the building will be occupied by the "Room of Ceremonies", a wooden volume that repeats the shape of the outer concrete shell. Outside, its cladding is made of dark wood, inside it is of light wood. The room is planned to be used for solemn events - for example, transferring especially valuable objects to one of the repositories, as well as for lectures, discussions or simply solitary reflection.
A deciduous tree will be planted in the center of the room to commemorate the metasequoia and ginkgo forests that grew on Svalbard over 200 million years ago, as did linden, chestnut, elm and birch. These more familiar trees remained here 56 million years ago, when the temperature here was 5-8 degrees higher than now. If climate warming continues at the current pace, deciduous forests will return to the archipelago in 150-200 years.
