Snøhetta
Snøhetta, named after a Norwegian mountain, made its breakthrough with the library in Alexandria and became world-famous with the Oslo Opera House. The firm works on the borderline between architecture, landscape and design.
Snøhetta was founded in 1989 in Oslo by a group of architects and landscape architects, among them Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and the American Craig Dykers. The firm took its name from the mountain Snøhetta in Dovrefjell, one of Norway’s highest peaks, as an image of an architecture that unites landscape and building. That same year the young group won the international competition for a new library in Alexandria in Egypt, one of the largest architectural commissions in the world at the time. From the outset Snøhetta has worked across disciplines, with architecture, landscape architecture, interiors, graphic design and product design in the same team. The firm has grown into an international practice with studios in several countries.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002, has a large, tilted circular roof and a granite wall carved with scripts from all over the world. The Oslo Opera House, opened in 2008, has a roof of white marble that rises out of the Oslofjord and that visitors can walk up onto, turning the building into a public landscape. The firm has also designed the museum pavilion at the 9/11 Memorial in New York, the Ithra centre in Saudi Arabia, Lascaux IV in France and the underwater restaurant Under in Lindesnes. In Sweden it designed the Väven cultural centre in Umeå together with White Arkitekter. Snøhetta has also designed Norway’s banknotes and works on energy-positive buildings such as the Powerhouse in Trondheim.
Snøhetta has become one of the best-known architectural practices in the world and a symbol of the international breakthrough of Nordic architecture since the 1990s. The Oslo Opera House has transformed Bjørvika from a harbour area into a new district with museums and a library and shown how a public building can become a meeting place for the whole city. The firm’s way of treating landscape and architecture as a whole has influenced younger practices in the Nordic countries. Snøhetta has also gained great influence in sustainable architecture through its energy-producing buildings. The practice stands for a democratic outlook in which buildings should be accessible to all, and in which the roof, the square and the landscape become public spaces.