Career
She is the first woman to have designed a building in Iceland. In 1949 Högna Sigurðardóttir became the first Icelander to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Shortly after graduating in 1960, she designed a residential building in the Westman Islands, so becoming the first woman to design a building in Iceland.
She went on to build other residential buildings in Reykjavík and Kópavogur, installing furniture of her own design and adding gardens on the roofs as a means of creating an affinity with the natural surroundings.
Her fine appreciation of landscape and nature can be seen even more vividly in the residential building at Bakkaflöt 1 in Garðabær. Inspired by the look of a traditional Icelandic turf house, Högna Sigurðardóttir made creative use of modern methods and materials in completing the work.
As a result, in 2000 the building was picked out in an international review as one of the 100 most noteworthy buildings of the 20th century in Northern and Central Europe.
