“Historically, the Faroese have tried to erase the border between landscapes and buildings” In 2018, the municipality of Eysturkommuna, in the Faroe Islands, became the second region in the country to get its own town hall. Normally, Faroese councils convene in repurposed buildings, such as old schoolhouses, but in this five-town, 2,100-person district, which came into existence via a 2009 amalgamation, the citizens envisioned something better. Faroese building culture tends toward modesty; the residents of Eysturkommuna wanted to do what nobody else had done.
Jóhan Christiansen, the municipality’s first and only mayor, says that the goal was also to recreate a former hub in the town of Norðragøta, once home to an expansive beachfront. In the 1960s, though, a fish processing facility set up shop and turned the beach into…
