In Reykjavík, the former Elliðaárstöð power station has found a new life as a place for learning, culture, and play. The redesign by the studio Terta gives the existing structures a different public purpose. For us, it is an inspiring example of a space being given permission to mean something new.
What Terta did — and what it teaches — is not really about architecture. It is about the relationship between space, colour, and the art that inhabits them. And that relationship is as relevant to a single room in a private home as it is to a century-old building in Iceland.
The Building That Changed Its Mind
Elliðaárstöð’s power station was commissioned in 1921. Its redesign brings renewed uses to the existing buildings, with communal areas, a visitor centre, and a restaurant.
As Iceland Design and Architecture describes the project, Terta’s redesign centres on learning, togetherness, outdoor activity, and play. The site’s paths, installations, and public spaces connect those uses to the surrounding landscape.
The result is a building that still looks like what it was, but feels like something completely different. That gap between appearance and experience is where the interesting question lives.
What Industrial Spaces Know About Atmosphere
There is a reason that so many of the world's most compelling art spaces occupy industrial buildings. The Tate Modern in London, Dia:Beacon in New York, countless galleries in converted warehouses and factories across every major city — the pattern is consistent enough to be worth examining.
Industrial buildings have qualities that purpose-built cultural spaces often lack. The ceilings are high enough to make you aware of the air above you. The materials are honest — brick, concrete, steel — in ways that create a specific quality of presence. The history is legible in the structure itself: you can see that this building has done serious work, that it has a life before the one it is living now. That history gives art something to push against, a context that makes the work feel more significant rather than less.
The white cube gallery — the neutral, windowless, climate-controlled box that became the dominant model for art display in the twentieth century — was designed to eliminate context, to make the art the only thing in the room. Industrial spaces do the opposite. They bring their own weight, their own character, their own emotional register. Art placed in them is in conversation with the space, not isolated from it. That conversation, when it works, produces something that neither the art nor the space could produce alone.
The Psychology of Colour in Space
Colour is one of the aspects of Terta’s project that catches our attention. In our reading, the playful visual language helps the former industrial site feel inviting; we draw inspiration from that change in atmosphere.
We use colour as a way to explore a room’s atmosphere. Try a warm, saturated work if you want a lively focal point, or a quieter palette if you prefer restraint. Judge the effect in your own light and surroundings; these are styling suggestions, not rules about heart rate or emotion.
We read the colour in this project as part of its invitation to play. That is also how we approach electric colour in neon surrealist art: a visual choice in service of a mood or idea, with room for each viewer to respond differently.
This is the distinction that matters when thinking about colour in your own space. Colour chosen for coordination — to match the sofa, to complement the floor — is decoration. We prefer to choose colour for the atmosphere we want to explore, while leaving room for different personal responses. The buildings that stay with you usually do.
Art as the Agent of Transformation
The transformation of Elliðaárstöð was not accomplished by architecture alone. The structural changes were significant, but what changed the building's emotional meaning was the art and colour that now inhabit it. This is a consistent pattern in the history of spaces that have been successfully transformed: the architecture creates the conditions, but the art completes the work.
A space without art is a container. A space with art is an environment — something that produces a specific experience in the people who move through it. The difference is not subtle. You feel it immediately when you enter a room where a work of genuine weight has been placed with intention. The room is different. Not because anything structural has changed, but because the art has given the space an emotional centre of gravity.
This is as true of a private room as it is of a converted power station. The scale is different. The principle is identical. A single work, chosen carefully and placed with attention to how it relates to the space around it, can change the emotional register of an entire room. It does not need to be large. It does not need to be expensive. It needs to have genuine weight — psychological content that the room can organise itself around.
Terta’s work at Elliðaárstöð suggests this at architectural scale. The same logic applies at the scale of a bedroom wall, a living room, a study. The agent of transformation is the same. Only the square footage differs.
What This Means for Your Own Space
You do not need a century-old power station. You need a wall, a work, and the willingness to choose with intention rather than convenience.
Start with the wall that defines the room. Every room has one — the wall you face when you enter, or the wall opposite the place where you spend the most time. This is the wall that sets the room's emotional register. A work placed here with genuine weight will change how the entire room feels to inhabit. A work placed here without thought will simply fill the space.
Consider colour as a psychological tool, not a decorative one. Terta's transformation was accomplished partly through saturated colour used with intention. In a domestic space, this might mean a single work with electric colour on a dark wall — the contrast makes the colour appear to emit light, which changes the quality of the room's atmosphere in ways that are difficult to describe but immediately felt. For more on how dark walls and electric colour work together, see our guide to the neon aesthetic.
Think about the conversation between the art and the space. Industrial spaces work with art because the art has something to push against. In a domestic space, this means choosing a work that is in dialogue with the room's existing character — not matching it, but responding to it. A work that simply coordinates with the existing palette is decoration. A work that creates a productive tension with the space is transformation.
Give the transformation time. The transformation of Elliðaárstöð invites a longer view. The relationship between a space and the art that inhabits it develops over time. What you notice in the first week is not what you notice in the sixth month. The works worth choosing are the ones that continue to reveal themselves — that change as you change, that reward sustained attention rather than exhausting it. For more on choosing art that rewards the long relationship, see our guide to why people collect art.
For more of our ideas on choosing darker, quieter colours and spaces, see our guide to after Dopamine Décor.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Terta in Iceland?
Terta is the multidisciplinary design studio behind the redesign of Elliðaárstöð in Reykjavík, in collaboration with Landslag. Elliðaárstöð is the former power station site, now a public destination with a visitor centre, restaurant, outdoor spaces, and activities centred on learning and play. See Iceland Design and Architecture’s account for the project details.
How does colour affect how we experience a space?
Colour is one of the choices we use to shape a room’s atmosphere. We recommend testing a palette in the actual space, with its existing light and materials, and choosing the effect you enjoy. Terta’s redesign of Elliðaárstöð is a useful creative reference for connecting visual choices with how a space is used.
Can art really transform a room?
Yes — but the transformation depends on the quality of the choice. A work placed without intention will fill a wall. A work chosen for its psychological weight and placed with attention to how it relates to the space around it will change the room's emotional centre of gravity. The effect is immediate and cumulative: you feel it when you enter the room, and it deepens over time as your relationship to the work develops. The rooms that stay with you — the ones you remember long after you have left them — almost always have a work of art at their centre. That is not coincidence.
Cover image: Elliðaárstöð, Reykjavík; redesign by Terta. Photography via Dezeen.
Shop the Collection
Terta turns industrial bones into atmosphere. These pieces do the same thing on a wall.
The Orange-Lit Skull City Framed Print — A city rendered as a heated, remembering body — industrial scale turned emotional, ready to hang.
Stacked Dwellings Hahnemühle Photo Rag Print — Architecture stacked into something closer to a living organism, at an accessible archival tier.
The Skull Megastructure Hahnemühle Photo Rag Print — A structure built for the forgotten — the clearest statement piece for a converted industrial interior.
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