Most fine dining rooms worry about lighting levels. Huset has to deal with the sun disappearing for months. The restaurant sits in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. At 78 degrees north, it is the world’s northernmost fine dining restaurant.

Huset, which means ‘the house’, is located in a building completed in 1951 for a mining town that needed one roof for almost everything: church, hospital, sports hall, school, post office, cinema, concert venue. The building has outlived the industry that made it necessary, but not its role in the town, remaining a gathering place, only now with a 14-course Arctic tasting menu and one of Scandinavia’s largest wine cellars.

Dubbed the heart of the town by locals, Huset now begins a new chapter following an extensive transformation by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta, which treated the restaurant as a building of leftovers, repairs and accumulated habits. That matters in Svalbard, where materials arrive by ship, weather interrupts everything, and resourcefulness is a mindset of daily life.

Wallpaper* dines at Huset, Svalbard

The mood: no snow-globe romance

The interior is warmer than the latitude suggests. Two tones of stained oak run through the fixed joinery and bespoke furniture, picking up the mixed woods in the coffered ceiling of the former cinema hall. Öland stone appears on counters and a large dining table; red linoleum gives the floor a blunt, practical heat, while accents of stainless steel cut through the softness.

‘Creating a warm and intimate atmosphere in a place as full of contrasts as Svalbard is both demanding and incredibly exciting. In a setting where it’s either always light or always dark, it calls for a very particular approach to lighting and surfaces,’ says project manager and team lead interior at Snøhetta, Marlene Fenger Vedal.

The smartest move is the textile work. Snøhetta used three layers of transparent fabric to create panels with a moiré effect, so the walls seem to shift as the light changes. Similar panels slide along the windows in timber frames, filtering the view without turning away from it.

‘By working with what already exists, it’s possible to develop more sustainable and meaningful solutions in line with a place’s history and identity, where history is not only preserved but activated as a resource in shaping the future,’ adds Fenger Vedal.

Throughout, the furniture has a sculptural sharpness: solid Swedish pine chairs by Simmer, supplied by Verk, and round tables designed by Snøhetta, including versions with cone-shaped bases. The adjacent chambre séparée is enclosed with fabric-clad screens and centred on a three-metre custom oak table.

The Food: Permafrost, preservation, wine below ground

Head chef Alberto Lozano cooks from a place where abundance is not guaranteed. The kitchen works with trappers, fishers and foragers, using Nordic preservation techniques and whatever the fjords, tundra and seasons allow. ‘Everything starts with what we can find here,’ he says.

That restraint gives the 14-course Arctic Experience its edge, with Arctic cold cuts, such as Reindeer charcuterie, Ptarmigan pâté en croûte and Huset chees. Examples of preservation include scallops in kefir cream, petrified langoustine with collagen and black shallots, and hay combined with lacto-fermented Norwegian green tomatoes. Below it all sits the wine cellar, dating back to the 1980s, with more than 1,000 titles.

Huset Restaurant is located at SJ, Vei 300, Longyearbyen 9170, Svalbard & Jan Mayen

Milan Design Week 2026 is in full swing (follow our live blog to keep up). With the preeminent industry event now marked by an increasing number of exhibits, it’s often necessary for visitors to take a break at some point in the day, even if just for a few minutes. With all the kilometres walked, quick conversations had, emails checked, and Instagram posts perused, a reset is essential to keeping one’s spirits high. And while a coffee and pastry stop, or an aperitivo towards the end of the afternoon can do the trick, it’s not always the healthiest option.

An alternative this year is heritage Swiss furniture brand USM’s ‘Renaissance of the Real’ installation, produced in partnership with international architecture firm Snøhetta and imagined with Swiss-born, New York-based experience designer Annabelle Schneider. Presented in the courtyard of the storied Fondazione Luigi Rovati, the project is both sculpture and space.

Constructed using the USM Haller modular furniture system as a full-scale exoskeleton, the pavilion-like structure bubbles over as membrane fabric – parachute-grade polyurethane – inflates outward from within the metal tube and connector ball structure, creating a soft environment inside.

‘Guests are invited to slow down, [turn off their phones], take a break, go in, take shoes off, lay down and see what the breathing space does to them,’ Schneider says. ‘I think we’re living in an over-stimulated world where we’ve lost connection to ourselves; to what it means to be human. I think art and design have the power to bring us back to the physical and slow us down for a moment.’

Snøhetta was instrumental in determining the sequencing of the interior Adding a level of perceptible drama, the spaces get progressively smaller. The at-times sharp contrast in proportion helps hold the attention, keeping visitors in the moment. The hope is that phone usage is reduced.

As part of Schneider’s well-refined neuroaesthetic approach – the psychology of how visual and sensorial encounters influence our wellbeing and mood – the experience activated all of the senses. As guests arrive, they're given a hot towel. As they move through the installation, scent and sound are carefully calibrated as guiding forces. The use of a pale pink tone throughout was not arbitrary but also carefully deployed to help change perception. She has mounted similar installations at events such as New York Design Week and with similar intent: to help overwhelmed visitors take a much needed pause and re-engage with their immediate surroundings.

The intimate yet perhaps shared experience ends back outside, within the center of the courtyard; the ultimate environment for quiet contemplation. ‘We can’t just be fluid, passive in life,’ Schneider says. ‘We need a bit of guidance and framework as well. We need a balance of both.’

Fondazione Luigi Rovati, Corso Venezia 52, 20121 Milan, Tuesday 21 April – Sunday 26 April 2026, 10am-7pm daily

Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire is one of the most postcard-like Ivy League universities, a leafy and Neo-Georgian idyll. Modern and postmodern buildings by Venturi Scott Brown, Lo-Yi Chan and Charles Moore took great care to fit in. But Wallace Harrison’s 1962 Hopkins Center for the Arts – affectionately known as ‘the Hop’ – dared to shake things up.

The building, a dress rehearsal for Harrison’s design for the Metropolitan Opera house in New York, reads as a theatre from the front but conceals 175,000 sq ft, making it one of the largest collegiate arts facilities in the USA at the time.

The main theatre, foyer and attendant spaces were superb, but much of the remainder was a confusing labyrinth. Dartmouth wished to preserve the former and tweak the latter and for this task turned to Snøhetta, a firm with more than a little experience in injecting light and clarity in woodsy and wintry locales. The project, which opened in late October 2025, was an expansion, although the added square footage totals a modest 15,000 sq ft. Snøhetta aimed to bring ample sense to the classroom jumble and inject multiple new performance spaces.

In its day, the Hopkins Center was an experiment that anticipated the Metropolitan Opera’s form, which Harrison was working out simultaneously. Harrison could build in highly modern forms – see his Brutalist Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York – but he did not shrink from traditionalist nods. In her monograph on Harrison, historian Victoria Newhouse wrote that the Hopkins Center ‘combined structural innovation with historic precedent in its allusion to the form of Florence's 14th-century Loggia dei Lanzi’.

The building has become treasured. Mary Lou Aleskie, executive director of the Hopkins Center, explained the college’s quest for an architect who would respect the original, while acknowledging that the arts have changed. ‘In the mid-20th century, art spaces were built for two kinds of people: makers and consumers,’ Aleskie says. ‘But in the 21st century, we know that our experience of art can be much more expansive than that. It can't really be contained in a room.’

Craig Dykers, co-founder of Snøhetta, admires the diffuse inspirations of Harrison’s original structure and compares it to choreographer George Balanchine, who mixed classical with contemporary forms. ‘It’s very heroic but it’s also very delicate,’ the architect says. ‘His work is filled with a range of architectural thinking and we try to work that way too.

‘I think if you're too monolithic with your architectural conceptualisation it becomes alien to most people and only comfortable to architects who are often in airplanes,' he adds.

Dykers stressed how slender the structural columns are in Harrison’s facade – ’you could put your hand around them’ – and sought to do something similar in their most visible addition to the centre, a recital hall.

The Snøhetta team designed a façade system resembling an array of divining rods. This woven mullion system is structural, holding up not just irregularly shaped floor-to-ceiling windows but the roof itself. The addition is canted, a measure of deference to the original, but also intended to channel pedestrian energy to a new main centre lobby. Aleskie compares the arrangement to ‘a set of open arms rather than a hard entryway.’

Circulation was the bane of the original building; Snøhetta addressed this with several interventions, the most prominent of which was a new skylit, oak-lined main lobby. ‘When you move inside, you're seeing wood that is welcoming and warm and delightful, but also reminds you of the natural conditions nearby,’ Dykers says.

Snøhetta punctuated the main corridors with clearer features and seating clusters, providing guidance through the building. Its largest additions aren’t very visible: there’s a new experimental theatre at the rear of the building. ‘It’s not a black box; we don’t design black boxes – they feel like you got locked in someone’s broom closet,’ Dykers jokes. It is, he stresses, an experimental room and is, in fact, a deep forest green. The architects also converted another lower-level room into a theatre, doubling the number of performance spaces in the building.

Their interventions within the original Spaulding Auditorium volume were limited. A terrazzo stairway leading from the foyer to an upper social space, The Top of the Hop, was removed for the sake of improved visibility and reducing acoustical bleeding. Dykers attested to hesitation: ‘It was absolutely gorgeous, and I was torn personally throughout the process.’

The Top of the Hop space, visible from its exterior, was repainted and its lighting improved, but interventions were minimal. A striking original terracotta fireplace remains (Dykers resisted the urge ‘to take it home in my luggage’) and Snøhetta incorporated green furniture and a bar near to the main windows. There's more lounge space outside via seating chiselled from boulders. The aim, per Dykers, was to fit into Dartmouth’s character, while having some fun doing it. The architect likens it to a night out at a fancy restaurant: ‘It's not a folded napkin at a dinner table. It's just a teacloth, but it has all of these features that help to tie into the surroundings in a very sophisticated way.’

Shut your eyes and jab a finger at a map of the US and you will likely find a brand new, freshly spruced up or forthcoming art museum within driving distance of your digit.

In the Great Plains, there’s the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, with its sweeping new wing by Snøhetta. Venture south and you’ll encounter the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee, by Herzog & de Meuron, and can look forward to the development of a Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art expansion, in Kansas City, Missouri, currently being designed by Weiss Manfredi. Head to New York and discover the reimagined Frick Collection, a Beaux Arts-era mansion overhauled by Selldorf Architects, in addition to soon-to-open expansions of the New Museum, Studio Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, helmed by OMA, Adjaye Associates and Frida Escobedo Studio, respectively.

Museums are getting bigger on the western seaboard, too. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will soft launch its Peter Zumthor-designed extension this summer, while The Broad, completed only a decade ago, is also getting a makeover – it just broke ground on a new 50,000 sq ft addition by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. And that’s not even touching on projects in the wider cultural sphere, such as the revamped Storm King sculpture park in New York’s Hudson Valley, or the Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow by Mecanoo, the performing arts centre slated to open this summer.

According to data collected by AEA Consulting, a global firm that offers strategic services for the cultural sector, around 90 new cultural projects were announced in North America last year alone. ‘The museum sector has been on a long-term building binge,’ says AEA founder Adrian Ellis.

This may seem paradoxical, especially for the US, which has been plagued by culture wars and budget cuts, so what is behind the boom? One obvious culprit is the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw construction projects around the world grind to a halt before then picking up again. Aaron Dorf, a director at architecture firm Snøhetta, thinks museum work has always been cyclical, but the pandemic definitely contributed to a fresh wave of activity. ‘There were probably plenty of institutions that were in the pre-planning phase and hit pause, so that shifted the timeline for a number of them,’ he says. But there is more than that at play. One of the biggest drivers, says Brian Butterfield, a director at Why Architecture, is quite simply to do with building lifecycles.

'The biggest failure point of museums is the mechanical systems,’ he says, citing critical conservation infrastructure, such as temperature and humidity control. ‘Every 20-30 years, you have to replace them.’ Renovations and expansions are a prime opportunity to not only upgrade ageing systems but also to fund them. ‘It’s quite hard to raise a lot of money for what a layperson sees as an air conditioning replacement project,’ notes Butterfield, pointing to his firm’s recent overhaul of the 40,000 sq ft Michael C Rockefeller Wing at the Met, a portion of the museum that first opened more than four decades ago. Working with the Met’s design team, as well as Beyer Blinder Belle, they were able to reinstall art collections from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, but also incorporate digital features, display light-sensitive works (some on view to visitors for the first time) and conduct a complete mechanical overhaul. ‘The public sees the gallery renovation, but underneath the skin is a full systems upgrade that will hopefully last another 50 years,’ says Butterfield.

Ellis sees the recent uptick in museum openings and expansions as part of a longer trajectory, one that began way back in 1997 with the opening of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry. Cities began to look for more ways to make themselves appealing to both residents and visitors. ‘One of the things those cities alighted on was cultural infrastructure,’ says Ellis. ‘Bilbao was the poster child for this.’

Institutional soul-searching combined with macro trends such as globalisation, the need for heightened security post-9/11, and the ability to access culture in the palm of your hand via a smartphone, among other factors, necessitated a radical shift in the way museums got built, how they courted visitors and how they stacked up against their peers.

‘The tricky thing with museums is how do you keep your existing audience while attracting new ones that are younger and more diverse?’ says Butterfield. ‘Museums want to stay relevant. To do that, you have to evolve. And mostly, that means big capital projects.’

The LACMA extension, which has been in the works for nearly two decades, is a case in point. Its David Geffen Galleries will add nearly 110,000 sq ft to the museum. The project will not only comprise traditional spaces for art viewing, but also a new visitor entrance, outdoor plazas, a theatre, a store, dining destinations and educational facilities.

And museums aren’t the only ones thinking about the future; it’s a question that America’s ageing donor class also has top of mind. ‘There’s a certain generation with priceless art collections. And there are a lot of big capital projects that are being driven by promised gifts,’ says Butterfield.

The Joslyn’s new wing, for example, was built in part to accommodate the collection of the late entrepreneur Phillip G Schrager, a monumental gift that included 52 works by the likes of John Chamberlain, Jenny Holzer, Roy Lichtenstein and Antony Gormley. And the drive is not just steered by philanthropists and collectors – museum directors are also thinking about their legacies. ‘How do you make your mark?’ says Ellis. ‘Often the easiest way is a capital project. It’s very concrete, no pun intended.’

The money for such projects is certainly out there. According to data collected by Ellis’ firm, of the world’s top ten budgets for recently announced cultural construction projects, nine are in the US. ‘We’re talking about a quarter of a billion to half a billion dollars in the larger projects. These are incredible sums of money,’ he says. ‘Where are these sums coming from? They’re coming from private philanthropy in one form or another. We’re living in a period that’s not dissimilar in many ways from the Gilded Age when all those big museums, like the Met, were formed a century ago.’

However, it does look like this golden age for museum construction, at least in the Western world, is starting to slow down. ‘I think, to some extent, that trend has run or is running its course in Europe and America,’ says Ellis. Dorf concurs: ‘I think we’re on the downslope of a crest.’

The data supports those observations. According to the AIA’s April Architectural Billings Index, an indicator of construction health in the US, project billings have softened for 28 out of the past 31 months, which economists chalk up to uncertainty. Museums will likely feel the squeeze, too, says Ellis. ‘I’m not saying there’s going to be a precipitous decline, but I’m saying you may be looking at peak museum building as a function of peak museum planning.’

Which begs the question, are bigger museums better? ‘If you look at museums that people uniformly declare to be their favourite museums, they tend not to be enormous buildings but relatively modest, like the Sir John Soane’s Museum – they are relatable experiences,’ says Ellis. ‘Very few people put mega museums as their favourite. And I think there’s a lesson there that we probably need to learn.’ A lesson that half-billion-dollar budgets cannot buy.

When Snøhetta worked on Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum, the architects faced a very particular challenge. Their project was the complex's third addition, so its task was to shine without blinding its predecessors. The museum already consisted of an excellent 1931 Egyptianate deco building by John and Alan McDonald and an unusually deferential 1994 addition by Norman Foster (his first in the US). Snøhetta accomplished this task exceptionally well in grafting on a kinetic 42,000 sq ft addition that provides voluminous common spaces that show off their predecessors to great effect. That's the right manner for a third wheel to spin.

Inside the new Joslyn Art Museum's third addition

Snøhetta was free to choose where to put the addition on the museum's grounds and picked a perfect spot, essentially plugging a sort of artful lightbulb into the socket of the existing Foster-designed atrium. Aaron Dorf, senior architect at the firm, explained that this was a means to 'enhance the feeling that the three buildings had a common centre of gravity, and more importantly, could avoid creating hierarchy'.

Both of the prior structures were built nearly entirely out of Georgia Pink marble. Snøhetta opted for white concrete – but salted a little pink marble into concrete panels for continuity. One portion of the structure is a third cube, which features a concrete texture to recall the main stairs of the 1931 building. In contrast to its predecessors, which are solid down to the ground, this new section is cantilevered around its edges, a nod to Prairie-style tendencies and a welcome visual jolt.

The structure is nearly entirely glass at its slender waist. Concrete brise-soleil panels, patterned rising upwards to the roof from their gallery volume, allow a sort of stage drapery parting to provide better views of the original building.

The atrium inside is admirably weightless, with a second-floor passageway supported by trusses and thin steel rods to minimise visual interruption. The architects also very deftly managed a visual transition between the rigid rectilinearity of the prior buildings and the swoop of their addition; a very mild slope of under five per cent lends vertiginous interest to the passageway.

Snøhetta also polished up portions of the older structures and repurposed some elements, but these tweaks are largely invisible, with one exception. An excision at one end of the Foster pavilion provides windows for the café and a view of a sculpture garden. Gardens surrounding the museum have been dramatically improved in their connection to a principal street.

With enormous galleries and useful modern mechanicals from the Foster expansion already in place, and the majority of office and classroom space also on hand, this extension was free to focus on galleries of more modest size (a 40 per cent increase for the museum), public space, and a gift shop.

At the museum's preview, Snøhetta's Craig Dykers talked about the eternal predicament of the gallery designer, the task to keep light away from fragile paintings while avoiding building 'freezers for art'. Snøhetta succeeded at this with new upper-floor galleries to house a recent donation of over 50 modern to contemporary pieces, the Phillip G Schrager collection, and specific paper galleries on the ground floor. Possibly the most welcome feature of this addition is the art that faces the atrium; Robert Irwin, Morris Louis, and Laura Owens pieces greet you before you've even crossed the threshold.

Skylights provide shifting natural light, accentuated by hidden electric light when needed. Unusually, they face southward at roof level. Dorf explains: 'By facing southward, we can capture more of the full sky dome, which gives the daylight a more dynamic and complete colour spectrum inside the galleries.'

The galleries are also of an appealing scale. Snøhetta benefitted from a clear sense of the size of works intended for these spaces, with the Schrager collection calling for walls between 15ft and 17ft high and slightly smaller paper galleries. The Joslyn's director Jack F Becker explains: 'We wanted a greater sense of intimacy in the galleries. We are not MoMA or the Met, where we have twenty thousand visitors a day. We wanted something that felt a little more intimate than the Foster pavilion.'

The paper galleries currently house an inaugural exhibit on Omaha native Ed Ruscha and will soon host Japanese prints and other items drawn from storage.

The expansion enabled, says chief curator Taylor Acosta, 'the first real reinstallation of the museum since it opened in 1931' with over 100 recent works on display as well as other pieces long dusty in the vaults. You'll find one of Pollack's first action paintings, Courbet, Titian, Eva LeWitt, and much else. A particularly bracing choice was integrating Native American works with both 19th- and 20th-century collections. Dykers praised inchoate design inspiration found in the breadth of the museum's collection, from those very Native American pieces to 'a sensual deco sculpture' and renaissance works.

The finest placement is a Mark Suvero sculpture sitting atop an earthen plinth one storey up, directly outside the addition. It can be admired from the outside but particularly from inside the atrium, which curves around it. Its title is Bodacious and it lives up to the name.

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Beijing City Library is a cool slice of serenity within the Chinese capital's Tongzhou District. Designed by Snøhetta, this contemporary take on the library is the world’s largest climatised reading space and celebrates knowledge-sharing.

Beijing City Library: a new cultural destination

The Norwegian architecture firm worked alongside local practice ECADI to create the library. Within our current, digital age, libraries have often been disregarded as a dying spatial typology. 

However, according to co-founder and partner at Snøhetta Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, ‘It is the love people have for books that has made libraries survive the digital age and hold new potential to give back more to the city and its public. It is up to us to reinterpret the relationship between body, mind, and the surroundings to rekindle the joy of reading away from the screen. Libraries are here to stay.’

The Beijing City Library is set within a picturesque 'storybook' backdrop, surrounded by trees, hills and views of the Tonghui river. The design, drawing from this context, celebrates a library’s use within the 21st century. The fluid, glass-lined building welcomes a sense of nature into the reading space. Its slender columns expand as they reach the ceiling, emulating the underbelly of lily pads and creating an otherworldly microcosm.

‘The terraced landscape and tree-like columns invite visitors to lift their gaze and focus at a distance, taking in the bigger picture. This is a place where you can be sitting under a tree, reading your favourite book,’ says Robert Greenwood, partner and director of Asia Pacific at Snøhetta. 'The Beijing City Library has an intergenerational quality about it, where you would pass on your stories to children and introduce them to the titles you’ve loved.’

Under the canopy, the 16m tall forum is filled with curvatures that create a sense of movement within the building. A pathway carves its way through the space, providing natural direction between the library’s genres. This area is titled ‘The Valley’, and it replicates the meandering features of the nearby Tonghui river, drawing seamlessly on the library's context.

The interior is shaped in harmony with the building's natural hill-like curves, with seating, shelving and an informal zone where visitors can relax and talk. Achieving China’s highest sustainability standard, the building also minimises carbon use by utilising technology to control interior climate, lighting and acoustics. The Beijing City Library is an example of contemporary sustainable architecture that does not compromise creativity.

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Sustainability meets immersive design in a new climbing wall by Snøhetta, whose timber new climbing centre in Skien, Norway puts energy efficiency at the forefront.

For Bård Stangnes, lead architect of the Høyt Under Taket project, using timber as the main material allowed for the celebration of bucolic themes. ‘As the design was inspired by nature, it made us move away from thinking of walls, floors, and ceilings in a traditional way,’ he says. ‘We had rock formations in mind, where the distinction between wall and roof is blended, and the bold idea was to create a cave made of timber where you could explore every surface with your body.’

Snøhetta's climbing wall 

It is a vision made possible by the flexibility of the cross-laminated timber, which provides multiple fastening points, enabling the client Høyt Under Taket to easily change climbing grips and routes. By building with wood, the project also has a lower carbon footprint than traditional materials, thanks to its ability to be prefabricated in locations aside from the construction site, reducing the number of deliveries. Light and strong, timber is also a natural choice for projects which require shallow foundations, requiring less piling and simplifying the process.

‘The task was to make a design manual for different sites and sizes, so the building had to be quite pragmatic,’ Stangnes adds. ‘A central spine of structural timber frames makes up the architectural concept, and out from this one would add volumes according to different needs and situations. The timber frames give the brand a recognisable motif that will be part of its future climbing centres elsewhere.’

Resembling a cave of timber, the eschewment of the traditional separation between walls and ceilings and the exposed wood creates an immersive experience for the climber. ‘Understanding the need, understanding the client, and understanding the end user are one of the most rewarding things in architecture,’ says Stangnes. ‘It’s a task of a puzzle, but first, you must find the pieces. After our first workshop, Covid hit, and we had to find this new way of working digitally. It’s great to see that a framework shaped in a home office is now full of life, kids, and activity.’ 

snohetta.com 

Snøhetta has designed a collection of three stars for the Norwegian Cancer Society’s Christmas Star Campaign, which marks its tenth anniversary this year.

The campaign has been selling decorative Christmas stars to hang in the windows of hospitals, businesses and homes in Norway since 2012, raising NOK200 million  (around €19.3 million) to date. 100 per cent of its proceeds go towards funding lifesaving cancer research. 

Snøhetta’s trio of designs explore the multiple meanings of a star. Rather than a traditional polygonal shape, the designs highlight specific aspects of stars, such as reflection, movement and presence. They also reflect on the concept of time, and how hospital patients, who are by necessity distanced from the outside world, tend to experience time differently.

Two of the stars are made out of paper. The smallest one – meant to be accessible to everyone – is available in green, gold and silver, and needs to be assembled by the buyer. ‘It’s about spending time and attention on something, and being present in that moment,’ explains Seppe van Heusden, product designer at Snøhetta. The star can be used to decorate a Christmas tree, but also doubles as a to-and-from note for Christmas presents.

A larger ‘hospital star’, similar in form, material and construction, is intended for hospital windows, designed with the aim of connecting the patient to the outside world. Its reflective surface brings light from the outside into the hospital room, reminding patients that other people are keeping them in their thoughts. Van Heusden adds that the design shows how ‘time is not standing still, because it catches wind and it moves a little when it is hanging in front of the window’.

The final design – released in a limited edition – is a candle holder, handmade by expert artisans at TH Marthinsen, a metal workshop in Tønsberg, southern Norway that dates back to 1883. The design team reasoned that a candle’s flame is in many ways like a star: it lights up when everything else is dark, it can create an emotional connection, and has a natural beauty. Made in untreated brass, the candle holder will patinate over time. ‘You can always polish it back to its original state, but if you leave it be, it will age beautifully with time, lasting for generations,’ explain the design team.

Sustainability is fundamental to all Snøhetta’s projects, and so all three designs are produced in Norway using locally sourced materials, and they avoid any use of plastic. Additionally, the paper stars can be shipped flat, which reduces carbon emissions associated with transport and storage. ‘At Snøhetta, we believe that design is a tool to change the world for the better, and therefore when we start our design process we always try to adapt the design to the values we stand for,’ explains product designer Francesca Giulia Poli.

To reach a wider audience, Snøhetta has created an online template of the little star along with instructions for assembly, which anyone can download, with the option of donating an amount of their choice.

‘Every Norwegian has a connection with the Norwegian Cancer Society, and in many ways, the campaign has become an important part of the Advent season and Christmas for many of us, concludes Hedda Foss Lilleng, managing director of Snøhetta Design. ‘Hopefully, our design can contribute to raising money for vital cancer research.’

The Norwegian Cancer Society’s Christmas Star Campaign launched Tuesday 15 November. Little star, NOK120 (€12); hospital star, NOK300 (€29); candle holder, NOK3,500 (€338)

stjerneaksjonen.no
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Glass is often lauded as an infinitely recyclable material, capable of being melted down and reformed over and over without a loss of quality. There’s a lot of it in discarded electronic products – fridges, ovens, microwaves, computers, and so on. And yet, a combination of varying glass compositions, logistical hurdles and bureaucratic red tape have meant that when these products reach the end of their lives, most of the constituent glass simply ends up in landfill. 

This is a challenge that Studio Plastique, a research-based design studio in Brussels, first took on in ‘Common Sands’, an investigation into the ‘extraction, transformation, application and end-of-life of sand and sand-based products’. At a 2019 exhibition, Studio Plastique met the international architecture and design studio Snøhetta, and decided to join forces to bring their research into an architectural context.

Their collaboration resulted in a collection of glass tiles, called ‘Forite’, with a dappled, terrazzo-like appearance that suggests its diverse material origins and elevates its appeal.

‘Glass is treated in a wide range of coatings and laminates, so if you mix recycled glass, you end up not with a transparent material but rather a muddy, greenish-brown colour. But this quality that makes glass difficult to recycle is also what makes our tiles interesting,’ explains Snøhetta’s Henry Stephens.

Stephens adds that a circular economy demands that we reassess our relationship with aesthetics. ‘Modern materials are all driven by modernisation and standardisation, whereas if you’re designing with waste, there’s always going to be a bit of variability.’

Meanwhile, Studio Plastique’s Archibald Godts acknowledges that it was simple to design and create individual tiles, but bringing the product to market at scale was the ‘really daunting’ bit. EU recycling regulations on glass are rigid, and meant that it took strenuous efforts to secure the e-waste glass where they needed it, and at the right time.

It is thanks to Alessio Brioni, fourth-generation owner of Italian tile manufacturer Fornace Brioni, that ‘Forite’ is now commercially available. It comes with a choice of three backing colours (green, grey and transparent), and two sizes (10cm x 10cm, 30cm x 30cm).

‘Fornace Brioni has been producing tiles out of clay since 1920, but this is the first time we’ve worked with another material,’ says Alessio. ‘I think it’s the most difficult thing we’ve done.’

It’s a gamble that has clearly paid off, judging from the critical claim that Forite has garnered – including a Wallpaper* Design Award 2022 for Best Domestic Design.

Milan Design Week 2022 sees Forite shown to the public for the first time, in a pop-up showroom at Alcova, a showcase of independent design that takes over the abandoned Baggio military hospital in the west of Milan until 12 June.

On view are not only the ‘Forite’ tiles, but also samples of e-waste glass, prototype tiles that have been made from specific waste streams (fridge, TV screen, phone, photovoltaic panel, microwave tray, microwave door, oven and more), and a video that illustrates the research, design and manufacturing processes. 

The final tiles are displayed individually, within small grids, and in more architectural applications, including vertical panels, and a 120 x 120 x 60cm plinth in the centre of the space. The architectural forms are kept ‘fairly abstract, so people can project their own ideas onto them’, says Stephens.

The vertical panels are particularly evocative – suggesting the possible application of Forite not only as wall coverings but also space dividers. Clear glass tiles are displayed against generous windows that overlook the lush grounds of the military hospital, perfectly accentuating the tile patterns and illustrating just how alluring waste materials can be. 

Consistent with the sustainable ethos of the tiles, the exhibition design aims for a minimal environmental footprint: the adjustable aluminium profiles that hold up the vertical panels will be returned to their supplier after the exhibition closes.

‘Forite is just the beginning, and an example for us and others to learn from,’ concludes Marius Myking, director of product design at Snøhetta. ‘The potential in materials that are currently not used efficiently due to restrictions, regulations, old habits, and systems, or lack of political incentives is enormous.’

INFORMATION

Forite tile_01, 10cm x 10cm, €280 per sq m
Forite tile_02, 30cm x 30cm, €300 per sq m

forite.io

studioplastique.be; snohetta.com; fornacebrioni.it

It is always big news when Snøhetta, one of the most influential architecture and design practices of our time, not to mention Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021 judges and 2020 winners – unveils a new project, and its latest launch doesn’t disappoint. 

The ‘Intersection Worktable’ combines Snøhetta’s penchant for material innovation and sustainable construction to create a singular reimagining of the conventional worktop. 

The ‘Intersection Worktable’ is made from Tasmanian oak, ethically sourced and reclaimed from an ancient forest lost underwater for 25 years at one of the world’s first underwater forestry operations. 

Speaking about the material, Snøhetta’s director of product design, Marius Myking, says, ‘Working with a material hidden under water for several decades has been an exciting learning experience. Supplied by Hydrowood, the Tasmanian oak gives the worktable a nuanced and textured quality with a lot of history inherent in it. The design explores the material qualities and the wood’s potential for industrial use in the future.’

The wood’s aquatic origin is reflected in the table’s shape, which flows in a smooth, continuous form just like the Australian coastline. The overall effect is an expansive workstation that can fit four people with an integrated meeting place at one end, encouraging easy communication and collaborative work. Hollow legs intersecting the tabletop hide cables and other storage in a neat solution to keep the workspace clutter-free. 

The ‘Intersection Worktable’ demonstrates the most intrinsic characteristics of Snøhetta’s ethos – an interest in blending traditional handicraft and modern technology, a commitment to sustainability, and a desire to create spaces that encourage human interaction. 

One of Snøhetta’s founding partners, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, told us earlier this year: ‘We’re not looking to return to normal, but rather to design for a more resilient and adaptable future.’ And while that’s a mighty goal, the ‘Intersection Worktable’, at least, evidences the innovative ways objects can be reimagined for a more sustainable, long-lasting future.

INFORMATION

snohetta.com

Ordrupgaard Art Museum in Denmark, home to world-class Danish and French art, has expanded its wings with the opening of a new addition by Snøhetta. The international design studio has added five new subterranean exhibition spaces to the historic building following the museum's previous expansion by the late master designer Zaha Hadid in 2005. Discreetly situated near Jægersborg Dyrehave, Copenhagen, the state-owned art museum which was originally an impressive three-winged neo-classical country mansion continues to combine historic Danish architecture with contemporary design.

Mostly underground, the extension creates a holistic route through the museum that meticulously connects Hadid’s distinctive black lava concrete extension with the museum’s permanent collection and original building. Three of the new five spaces are dedicated to the museum's extensive assembly of French impressionist paintings while the remaining two zones masterfully link the existing exhibition spaces. The new expansion produces a well-informed circular movement throughout the building which creates a genuine sense of fluidity as one meanders around looking at the world-renowned art pieces.

The largest exhibition area is a bold, steel-skinned structure that playfully glistens in the tree-lined landscape. Inspired by the paintings of impressionist giants Degas, Monet, and Renoir, the extension exterior delicately captures light and its changing qualities. Characterized by its diagonal cut in the landscape, faceted edges, and polished finish, the form carefully guides visitors to the main entrance of the Ordrupgaard. This volume is complemented by the natural stone steps and lush surrounding foliage.

To contrast the metal exterior, Snøhetta created soft and organic interiors that help to provide a warm atmosphere. Inside, gypsum boards are mounted to oak walls which allow curators to easily change the colour scheme of each room. The ceilings on the other hand, are wrapped in crisp oak veneer cassettes with cleverly placed light fittings that help place the artwork on the centre stage. As you walk through the museum, you notice how natural daylight floods the building - both when you leave the exhibition spaces and when entering the original museum building. Here, light helps signify the transition from one building to the next.

For over three decades, Snøhetta has designed some of the most impressive cultural buildings across the globe. The transdisciplinary practice merges architecture, landscape, and interior design with graphic, product, and digital design. For their extension of the Ordrupgaard Art Museum, they have carefully considered the original structures, blended old and new, and created a fluid, elegant and refined addition to the historic Danish building.

INFORMATION
snohetta.com

The new Holzweiler Platz in Oslo illustrates that the concept of a successful retail environment today is centred around the idea of a fluid space, part-boutique-part-hang-out-zone, where shoppers can spend, socialise and pass the time, without feeling hurried or hounded.

Take Browns' recently opened flagship store on central London's Brook Street, which boasts a restaurant, make-up and hair styling rooms, an experiential concept space and a concierge service, and allows shoppers to complete their purchases from home; or Matchesfashion's Mayfair townhouse, which features a top-floor café and a roving roster of exhibitions. 

For Holzweiler's fifth bricks-and-mortar boutique, the Norwegian brand's most ambitious and experiential retail project to date, the label looked to water as a recurrent motif. Holzweiler Platz, not just a shopping destination, but a two-floor, 300 sq m café and socialising space too, is described by brand co-founder Suzanne Holzweiler as a ‘dream of ours for many years'. It sits between the Snøhetta-designed Opera House and soon to open Munch Museum in Oslo’s burgeoning Oslobukta waterfront district. Snøhetta – long-term collaborators of the label and Wallpaper* Design Awards 2021 judges and 2020 winners – conceived the naturalistic space, one that encourages collaboration and interaction and unites the worlds of fashion, art and food.

Welcome to the water-inspired world of Holzweiler Platz

‘Post Covid-19, after customers are so used to shopping digitally, they need something experience based in terms of physical retail,’ Holzweiler says. ‘We want to create a fluid connection.' For Holzweiler Platz's opening, the Norweigan artist Marianne Hurum has designed the artwork for the brand's café, the first of an annual roster of artists invited to show within the flagship.

‘In the spaces that we've worked on together, we've focused on one natural material,' says Manon Tardieu, Snøhetta architect. ‘Because of the location of the space, we focused on water. It's also an element that really unifies people.'

Adds Peter Girgis, senior interior architect at Snøhetta, ‘It's a very present symbol in this neighbourhood. Water has been integrated into the city fabric and its public and residential buildings. Water inspired the idea of unity through shape and form, the soft formation of walls and ceiling patterns.' Fluid curves and fixtures abound within the space, formed using glass tubing, oiled oak and walls treated with mineral paint.

When conceiving the experiential space, Holzweiler was intent on creating a dialogue and sensory narrative between the different areas of Holzweiler Platz. ‘Initially our sketch of the restaurant space was too small,' Girgis explains. ‘Susanne explained she wanted active trigger points between the sensations of the space. For people, for example, to really hear the sound of coffee being made.’

Holzweiler Platz also establishes a cultural connection to the surrounding Oslobukta district, a growing area which was still sparse in its development when Holzweiler first visited the location of her brand's store in September 2019. Outdoor seating and huge windows ground Holzweiler Platz in the surrounding area, one with diverse architectural intentions, described by the co-founder as like a ‘hub for everyone', which will also be populated by art and office spaces. ‘We've had this project in our minds for so many years, and now it's finally ready,’ she says.

INFORMATION

holzweileroslo.com
snohetta.com

ADDRESS

Operagata 61D, 0194 Oslo, Norway

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When Snøhetta co-founder Craig Dykers met Jon Gray of chef collective Ghetto Gastro in Cuba on New Year's Eve through artist José Parlá, little did they know that three years later they would be working together on a project on the other side of the world. Now, Burnside, an experimental culinary and event space created by Snøhetta for art and design collective En One Tokyo, is ready to open its doors in the Japanese capital. Bronx-founded Ghetto Gastro is set to kick off a residency there, and the architects are excited. 

The project was assigned to Snøhetta in the run up to the Tokyo Olympics, after Gray recommended the practice to En One Tokyo. ‘We’ve been in deep partnership with Snøhetta, defining how the ethos of Ghetto Gastro transmutes into the built environment, so its only right we keep it in the family,’ says Gray. ‘From day one, the En One Tokyo team wanted us to bring the Ghetto Gastro energy to Tokyo through this collaboration.’ He fell in love with the site, a former shop, as soon as he saw it. ‘The convenience store in Tokyo is the equivalent to the bodega in the Bronx, so there was an immediate resonance.'

This is not the first time Snøhetta has designed a high-standard professional kitchen. The French Laundry, redesigned and extended in 2018 for Michelin-starred chef Thomas Keller in California, had given the architects lots of insight into the precision and expertise required in such an environment. Burnside’s space may be small, but it packs a punch in style and efficiency. ‘It is very intimate, as many spaces are in Tokyo,' says Dykers. ‘The design is about versatility, doing a few things very well – as opposed to flexibility, doing many things in an ordinary way.'

In order to maximise the use of space, the architects ‘masterplanned' it, defining areas and enhancing the potential of every inch. Out of the boutique interior, the team created three dining areas (a bar, a long, farmhouse table and a lounge) and a highly finessed professional kitchen in a U-shaped layout, which is placed a couple of steps up from the main dining floor. ‘The kitchen sits behind a proscenium arch, like those found at a theatre stage,' says Dykers. ‘The kitchen becomes a spectacle.'

Snøhetta co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen photographed for our February 2021 issue (W* 262) via Zoom.

‘Working with Ghetto Gastro and En One Tokyo was highly collaborative from the beginning. We shaped the space to find its greatest potential, but the overarching ideas on its intended use and vision came from them,' says Snøhetta’s interior architecture director Anne-Rachel Schiffmann. Dykers adds: ‘Much of the inspiration came from the Ghetto Gastro, including its approach to creating environment and community, and how it shares the culture of the Bronx through art – in particular, culinary art – with the rest of the world.'

Ghetto Gastro is well known for its ‘Black Power Kitchen' culinary style, and Snøhetta wanted to reflect that in the interior. ‘The colour black created a cultural standpoint, referencing the use of Shou Sugi Ban charred wood and the dark atmosphere of Tokyo’s izakaya bars,' says Dykers. ‘At the same time, we’re referencing Ghetto Gastro’s notion of power in the colour black and the sense of Blackness.'

Ash wood, bespoke joinery and clever lighting define the interior. A Makoto Azuma artwork was created specifically for the space, and hangs behind the bar, titled Block Flowers. The space can be set up in different ‘modes' for night and day, depending on the event. The long table can even become a catwalk. Amber accents nod to the heat of the traditional Japanese grill. The food served will be Caribbean-inspired, but with Japanese influences. 

The pandemic delayed the launch of this project a bit, but it now marks the start of a new, busy year for Snøhetta. Following hot on the heels of Burnside in the hospitality sector is the practice’s new design for Bar Agricole in San Francisco, which is expected to complete in the summer. Cultural projects such as the El Paso Children’s Museum, and the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin are also underway. Watch this space.

INFORMATION

snohetta.com

ghettogastro.com

enone-tokyo.com

As a founding partner of Snøhetta, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen has had a hand in some of the finest contemporary cultural buildings. From Oslo Opera House, which rises from the fjord like a glacier, to the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia, which glistens under the desert sun like giant pebbles (W*212), and to the International Cave Art Centre in Lascaux, carved into the landscape like a ravine (W*216), his architecture takes on imaginative forms that are sensitive to their surroundings and conducive to human interaction. ‘It’s about looking at the context of a project and creating the best project for that particular context,’ he tells us.

The Norwegian architect’s passion for public space, his deep understanding of architecture’s social function, and his longstanding commitment to sustainability have made Snøhetta one of the most influential practices of our time, and the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt’s 2020 National Design Award for architecture. They also make Thorsen exceptionally qualified to judge this year’s Wallpaper* Design Awards. 

It was last December when we reached Thorsen via email. We found him in Oslo, taking stock of the year and thinking about ‘the notion of collective memory and our potential as a society to learn, adapt, and change after this pandemic’. He is convinced that we’re in a pivotal moment, and whether and how we learn from our experience ‘will dictate what sort of buildings and cities we design, and by consequence, what kind of world we pass on to our children and grandchildren.’

‘Experts are warning us that viruses like Covid-19 stem from the compounded impacts of deforestation and habitat destruction,’ he points out. ‘We as architects need to take this time to rethink and expand our notion of what it means to conceive both socially and environmentally conscious design.’ 

At Snøhetta, efforts have included a series of Powerhouse buildings (in collaboration with construction company Skanska, environmental organisation Zero, and a few others) that generate more energy than they consume over the course of their lifetime, including construction and demolition. The eventual goal is to scale up this strategy to the rest of Snøhetta’s portfolio, and ultimately throughout the building industry.

Much has been written about the upcoming Svart, in the Arctic circle: a ring-shaped structure that hovers on wooden piles above the clear waters of Holandsfjorden fjord, which will be the world’s northernmost Powerhouse building and the first energy-positive hotel. But Thorsen is equally proud of Snøhetta’s 2020 Powerhouse Telemark office block, despite its mundane industry park surroundings. The faceted building has a sloping roof to allow more space for solar panels. When it launched, a Norwegian architecture critic wrote that the project shows what the everyday will look like in the future. ‘I think that’s huge,’ reflects Thorsen. ‘First, we need to make what seems impossible possible. Then we can make it ordinary all while we innovate and push industry standards further. It’s a cycle of innovation.’

While Snøhetta continues to create remarkable buildings from ground up, there is an increasing emphasis on retrofitting as well, in a bid to lower cement production, which is a carbon-intensive process. Ongoing examples include the Centre Monnaie/Muntcentrum in Brussels, and the Pirelli 35 building in Milan, which ‘deftly merges architecture, landscape, and urban design to create a generous and publicly accessible building with a significantly reduced carbon footprint.’

Beyond client-driven projects, Snøhetta has conducted cross-disciplinary research on materials for building and production: on new ways to substitute virgin plastic with recycled material, and to transform the clay dug up at construction sites into building material. Thorsen explains: ‘A key ambition is to trigger awareness of this ubiquitous material that surrounds us, and to explore, develop and employ new sustainable ways of building for the future.’ 

He believes that building for the future also means protecting and growing public spaces. ‘During the pandemic, we’ve closed ourselves into clans, into extremely small family groups or communities. In the long run this is not a good foundation for creating a society.’ The responsibility falls on urbanists and architects, to create spaces that inspire behavioural shifts (one is reminded of the rooftop of Oslo Opera House, which all visitors are encouraged to climb in a gesture that enables popular access to high culture). But it is equally up to every citizen, who needs to reconsider what spaces they consider private and public. Opening up the gray areas between the two is crucial to fighting loneliness and isolation, but likewise ‘to make sure that we are not pulling ourselves into nationalism,’ he reflects.

Thorsen concludes that our immediate task goes beyond restoring the damage of the past year. The goal should be to build back better, and to take preventative design measures that reduce the risk of disaster, whether it is another pandemic or the climate emergency. ‘We’re not looking to return to normal, but rather to design for a more resilient and adaptable future.’

It follows naturally that looking to our Judges Awards shortlists, Thorsen would be drawn to projects that help secure our future: among them NMB Studio’s portable handwashing station, which promotes effective sanitation in otherwise poorly equipped medical facilities. 

In the Best New Private House category, Thorsen’s vote went to the Bat Trang House, by Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia. Built for an affluent artisanal family in a village known for its ceramic production, it is wrapped in perforated red clay ceramic tiles that protect it from the elements. The layout combines showrooms on the lower floors and private spaces above, which Thorsen calls ‘an exemplary distribution of functions and spaces’. ‘The design further balances a contemporary and vernacular architectural expression emphasised by both form and material. This makes it fresh, new and old at the same time.’

INFORMATION

snohetta.com

What is even more sustainable than a building that produces zero emissions? A building that actually creates more energy than it will consume over its entire lifespan, says Snøhetta. The famed Norwegian architecture studio, together with collaborators R8 Property, Skanska and Asplan Viak, has just completed the fourth energy positive building in its Powerhouse portfolio – Powerhouse Telemark. 

‘The energy sector and building industry account for over 40 per cent of global industry’s heat-trapping emissions combined,' says the team. ‘As the world’s population and the severity of the climate crisis continue to grow, precipitating global disruptions such as the Covid-19 pandemic, architects are challenged to work across industries to build more responsibly.'

Located in the city of Porsgrunn of the Vestfold and Telemark region, the structure is not only an investment in the country's growing green economy, but also much needed workspace for the historically industrial city's economy. The building spans eleven floors and includes traditional office space and co-working areas, as well as a bar, meeting rooms and restaurant and staff canteen. 

The irregular, geometric shape of the building features solar panels on its roof. Natural shading is promoted and added insulation ensures heat is retained where possible. Heat is stored in the building elements, to be released slowly, while a geothermal well supports heating and cooling. As a result it was awarded a BREEAM Excellent** certification.

‘In striving to keep our planet as healthy as possible, we must take this moment to prioritize sustainable design practices, and specifically consider how our work impacts human and non-human inhabitants alike,' says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorsen. 

‘Although the gradual violence of the climate crisis might seem less acute compared to the rapid effects of viruses such as Covid-19, especially for those living in the global north, we as architects have a stake in the protection of our built and unbuilt environments. We need more industry-wide alliances such as Powerhouse to push industry standards for what is means to build sustainable buildings and cities, both on an economic, social and environmental scale.'

INFORMATION

snohetta.com

Holzweiler’s South Norweigan studio faces the Oslofjord, a breathtaking inlet that is part of the Skagerrak strait, connecting the North Sea and the Kattegat sea area. Nature is integral to the design approach of the brand – which branched from scarf design into ready-to-wear in 2014 – and works with sustainability-minded manufacturing processes, including swimwear designed with recycled polyester and in Europe, biodegradable packaging. Last season, Holzweiler’s S/S 2020 Copenhagen Fashion Week show produced a mere metre of gaffer tape waste from its production. The Danish city itself is one of the most forward thinking when it comes to eco-friendly fashion. On Tuesday it unveiled a three-year sustainability plan, including 17 standards which brands must adhere to by 2023 in order to remain on its show schedule.

For A/W 2020, Holzweiler has gazed not out to sea but down to the ground we walk on, with ‘Our Soil’ – a collection of durable, tactile and organically-toned pieces, featuring fossil prints and knitted patterns, spanning tailoring and workwear. This was presented against a greenhouse-inspired show set, designed by regular collaborators and Wallpaper* Design Awards 2020 winners, Snøhetta. 

At warehouse space The Plant – a former plastic sorting factory – a runway featured a glass tunnel housing a variety of hardy Nordic plants available in Denmark in January, including foraged seedpods sourced from an organic farm outside Copenhagen and ornamental grasses. These were sourced in collaboration with floral designer Moa Nordahl to complement the colours and robust fabrics in Holzweiler's collection. After the show, the plant box will be broken down and reused – one piece housed in Holzweiler’s showroom, one placed in a new retail outpost in Oslo and one for a pop-up space prop. Every plant will be regrown infront of the brand's HQ. ‘The idea is based on our sustainable vision, love for the earth and the idea of being able to use it again in other settings,' says co-founder and brand director Susanne Holzweiler.

In real horticultural harmony, Holzweiler also enlisted Joe Patitucci, co-founder of US record label Data Garden and DJ Loke Rahbek to devise a show soundbath which incorporated both meditative electronic beats and botanical plant pulses live from Snøhetta’s plant box.

Follow our live coverage on Instagram, featuring a Holzweiler takeover

Holzweiler has also nurtured its human relationships, collaborating on its A/W 2020 runway set with fellow Norweigans Snøhetta (whose studio also overlooks the Oslofjord). Snøhetta has worked with the label on a number of projects including its design studio, digital retail channel and Oslo flagship store. ‘We started designing furniture for a small pop-up space in Paris a couple of years ago,’ say senior interior architect Peter Girgis and architect Manon Tardieu. ‘The forms and concepts developed for these pieces really cemented the core understanding of our common visions.'

‘We gave Snøhetta the challenge of creating something that could be mounted and dismounted again in smaller scale,’ Holzweiler says. It was a challenge the architects relished. ‘The temporality of the installation was very exciting,’ add Girgis and Tardieu. ‘It demands a fantastic coordination between creative ideas and the built form.’ The idea of creating something modular, temporal and with the ability to evolve is symbolic of the importance of reusing and recycling in today’s luxury market. Getting green-fingered on a far reaching scale is the only way fashion will flourish. 

INFORMATION

holzweiler.no
snohetta.com

‘The energy sector and building industry accounts for over 40 per cent of global industry’s heat-trapping emissions combined, according to the World Resources Institute', explain Oslo-based architects Snøhetta. ‘As the world’s population and consequences of the climate crisis continue to grow worldwide, we are challenged to think how to build responsibly – creating high quality spaces for people while also reducing our environmental footprint.'

Their input towards solving this crisis? A dedication to considerate, sustainable architecture, and their latest offering – Powerhouse Brattørkaia, in Trondheim, Norway – is a case in point. Welcome to the 'world’s northernmost energy-positive building'. 

This innovative building – which houses workspaces – is cleverly designed to actually produce energy, rather than just consume it. In fact, astonishingly, it produces more electricity than it consumes – and that includes the energy that was required to build it.

Solar harvesting (through, for example, solar cells) was a key way to achieve this, while the nearby sea water contributes to both the heating and cooling system within. A sloping roof and top level courtyard were designed towards optimal orientation for solar energy production. So now, the building not only supports its own energy needs, but actually powers neighbouring buildings, electric buses, cars and boats too, through a local micro grid. 

‘Energy-positive buildings are the buildings of the future. The mantra of the design industry should not be “form follows function” but “form follows environment”. This means that the design thinking of today should focus on environmental considerations and reducing our footprint first, and have the design follow this premise,' says Snøhetta founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen. 

INFORMATION

snohetta.com

Europe’s first underwater restaurant is rearing its fin above the North Atlantic Sea, ready to reel in its first diners this spring. Under, by pan-disciplinary architecture firm Snøhetta, is three projects in one package: gastronomy innovation, marine research, and an experiment in form following both function and environmental demand.

Since setting up shop above an Oslo beer hall three decades and many design feats ago, Snøhetta is now well versed in the game of design unpredictability. It recently tackled Oslo’s Opera House, the pedestrian-friendly renaissance of New York’s Times Square, and it even has Norway’s newest run of banknotes under its belt. Here, the firm finds itself quite literally in uncharted waters, and never has the world seen anything quite like it.

The southernmost tip of Norway is like seeing the world with its lid off. The air is crisp and the sea and sky are azure blue on blue, divided only by rippling, fragmented fjords. Under is not hard to miss – a monolithic hunk of half-sunk concrete, beautifully at odds with the tranquil, chocolate-box town of Båly.

From one angle, the structure looks a bit like an accident – the latest architectural victim of coastal erosion or a shipping container nose-diving off a cliff edge. But Under is nothing short of genius, prompting awe, fleeting amusement and a lot of questions.

Unlike other underwater dining experiences to bob up around the world – think Dubai or the Maldives – the marine conditions here are in a different league of fierce. For thrill-seeking Snøhetta, this was all part of the fun. ‘We were looking for the ideal subsea setting,’ says Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, founding partner of Snøhetta. ‘We wanted more waves, and we wanted more wind.’ The structure – submerged five and a half metres below sea level and resembling a periscope – has been meticulously engineered to resist the shocks of an extreme marine environment. A reinforced, convex concrete shell and three-feet-thick acrylic windows minimise coastal impact and ensure that you won’t so much as get your hair wet.

Inside, guests are welcomed into the warm arms of stripped-back Scandi design. Split over three tiered levels, the interiors are a team effort with an emphasis on local trade. Kvadrat chipped in with textiles and acoustic panels and local interior craftsman Hamran decked out the space with understated furniture and soft oak cladding.

Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard – formerly at the helm of the Copenhagen’s Måltid restaurant – had the unenviable task of conceiving a menu to match the view. In terms of content, it’s along the lines of what’s swimming past the glass. But come prepared with an open mind and an empty stomach – Ellitsgaard has succeeded in carving out his own gastronomic utopia and is armed with two Michelin stars to prove it.

Under is a panoramic theatre: the stage an 11 m wide window beyond which kelp forests sway to the beat of current pulses, algae shifts with the seasons, and breeds of zooplankton make for a stirring performance. Outside service hours, the vessel harbours a research centre for marine biology where specialist teams gather data to encourage Mother Nature’s subaqueous blueprint to prosper.

Make no mistake, the menu prices are robust, but considering you’re catching two fish in one net by also visiting an inverted aquarium, Under begins to seem well worth the waiting list, connecting flight and cross-fjord expedition. Whether a gastro enthusiast, marine life tourist or just well heeled and curious, the whole saga will leave you totally smitten. Under is both the real, and unreal deal.

The marine conditions at the southernmost tip of Norway are in a different league of fierce. For thrill-seeking Snøhetta, this was all part of the fun.

The structure – submerged five and a half metres below sea level and resembling a periscope – has been meticulously engineered to resist the shocks of an extreme marine environment.

Inside, guests are welcomed into the warm arms of stripped-back Scandi design.

Kvadrat chipped in with textiles and acoustic panels and local interior craftsman Hamran decked out the space with understated furniture and soft oak cladding.

Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard – formerly at the helm of the Copenhagen’s Måltid restaurant – had the unenviable task of conceiving a menu to match the view.

Whether a gastro enthusiast, marine life tourist or just well heeled and curious, the whole saga will leave you totally smitten.

INFORMATION 

For more information, visit the Website

ADDRESS

Under Restaurant
Bålyveien 48
4521 Lindesnes Norway

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Norwegian design and architecture studio Snøhetta has designed the visual identity for one of the country's most important national transport services. The end-to-end redesign includes a dramatic name change – from Norwegian State Railways (NSB) to ‘Vy’ – reflecting recent, substantial changes to the company.

Founded in 1883, NSB was once responsible for the entire Norwegian railway operation. Today, it looks after travellers, but does not manage or own the rails, their systems, stations or trains. What's more, it oversees the nation's electric city cars (a popular mode of transport, particularly in Oslo); and its subsidiary, Nettbuss, is the largest bus operator in Norway and among the top bus operators in Sweden. The change to ‘Vy’ (which roughly translates from Norwegian as ‘perspective’ or ‘vision’) reflects the company's forward-looking, person-focussed outlook, as well as better referencing its role as an all-round transport provider, not just a rail system.

‘Vy is a real, Scandinavian word, which is distinctive in nature yet not widely used in modern language,' explains Kjetil Trædal Thorse, Snøhetta founder. ‘At the same time, it’s short and iconic, easy to remember and visually appealing'.

To embody to Vy ethos in logo form, Snøhetta drew from its Scandi roots. The palette – from pine greens to anthracite greys – is based on colours you might see when you move through cities, fjords and mountains of Norway and Sweden, from the vista of a train or bus window. The logo design comprises a single flowing line, connecting the ‘V’ and ‘Y’, rendered in a snaking, train track-like font. Adding to the sense of compositional movement, the bespoke type family (Vy Sans in three weights and Vy Display) was developed in collaboration with Göran Söderström, type designer at Letters from Sweden, with smooth, sloping edges, creating a sense of speed and efficiency.

This isn't the first time Snøhetta has tackled the visual identity of a well known national body. The Vy design follows the studio's hard-won redesign of Norwegian banknotes, first commissioned in 2014 and completed earlier this year, suggesting an ongoing emphasis on nationally important graphic design projects.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website

If the idea of manufacturing and production facilities brings to mind closed, dark industrial spaces and a dark-box process, think again. Snøhetta’s latest project, Swarovski Manufaktur in Wattens, Austria, breaks all the rules of what an industrial space could look like. 

The structure, which is part of the crystal specialist’s larger HQ and campus in the Tyrolian countryside, was conceived to house both production and creative processes; and most importantly merge the two – bringing makers, designers and clients together for co-creating sessions that open up the whole process of innovation. 

The space is as welcoming as its purpose suggests. Large, open spaces feature manufacturing lines alongside drawing boards and offices. A centrally placed, dramatic staircase acts as a key circulation core, but also doubles as a meeting space and main ‘forum’ at the heart of the facility.

The interiors are bright, clean and filled with natural light. Sun shines through the building’s glass-lined sides, but also the ceiling, through openings known as ‘cassettes’. The white steel ceiling incorporates 135 such openings, coated with special material to ensure there is no glare. On top of this, the building meets the criteria of the LEED Gold Standard (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for sustainability.

‘We tried not to interpret the physical properties of crystals in our building geometry’, explains Snøhetta’s Patrick Lüth. ‘Instead, we have tried to understand what makes crystal so special and attractive, and to use these ephemeral qualities to create a specific atmosphere. The space has an incredible amount of daylight penetration which we believe is unparalleled in the typical production facility context. Crystals only come to life with light, so for us it is the intense presence of that daylight that is the most important aesthetic aspect of this building.’

INFORMATION

For more information, see the Snøhetta website

The Nordic countries are known for their great advances when it comes to healthcare architecture and design; and this latest design by Norwegian masters Snøhetta is a case in point. The globally acclaimed Oslo- and New York-based architecture and design firm has just completed a series of cabins for the Friluftssykehuset Foundation. 

Located outside some of Norway's largest hospitals, Oslo University Hospital and Sørlandet Hospital Kristiansand in the South of Norway, the Outdoor Care Retreats, as the project is officially known, ensures patients can make the most of the therapeutic powers of nature and the Scandinavian country's unique, lush green setting. Situated in secluded parts of forest, near creeks and rolling hills, the structures are designed to receive patients and their friends and families for treatment, support and contemplation. 

Made out of wood in a simple and uncluttered style, so as to blend organically with the surrounding nature and not overpower it, the cabins feature minimalist yet comfortable interiors and large openings that draw the gaze towards the leafy surrounds.

The retreats ‘stand in stark contrast to the monumental hospital buildings that they are affiliated with', explain the architects. ‘Referencing the playful construction of wooden tree cabins typically made by children, the luminous cabins are formed like skewed blocks of wood that extend into the landscape through asymmetrical branches.' The cabins are thoughtfully designed, also allowing access for wheelchair users.

These Outdoor Care Retreats are donated as a gift by the Friluftssykehuset Foundation to the country's hospitals, offering a uniquely conceived physical and psychological respite from the demanding processes of healthcare treatment. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Snøhetta website

Barr cutlery, by Snøhetta. Photography: © Anders Schønnemann

Snøhetta is no stranger to transdiscipline design, having created everything from architecture to graphics, however this is the Norwegian firm's first foray into tabletop product. A new set of weighty cutlery created for Barr (the new restaurant in the original Noma space, which opened last year), will complement the restaurant's warming menu and polished-rustic interiors, as well as being on sale online and in selected stores, enabling more people to take part in Barr’s culinary story.

Barr is renowned for its nuanced approach to Scandinavian cuisine, uniting new Nordic, and old-fashioned strains. The cutlery, with its contemporary profile and farmhouse finish, follows suit. The bespoke set is defined by its stonewashed steel surface, treated so as to naturally and tonally transition from light to dark grey. The firm matched the design to ‘Barr’s food philosophy; an ideology where every ingredient and its processing are carefully selected to create a new and original dining experiences.’

‘The shapes are carefully aligned, creating harmony between the individual pieces of cutlery so that they form a natural whole, like letters in the same font,’ explains Benjamin Folkmann Hansen, head of Table Noir, the Danish design firm that Snøhetta collaborated with on the design. Snøhetta was also joined by Barr's executive chef Thorsten Schmidt, ensuring its first table-top designs were as exacting as Barr's interior architecture, furniture and menu. The utilitarian cutlery is designed to survive busy restaurant life, therefore will withstand household use for decades. 

This isn't the first time Barr has teamed up with designers to enhance its restaurant experience. Upon Barr's launch last year, Schmidt worked with ceramicist Kasper Wurtz to design a collection of plates in three neutral tones. Accompanying these are water glasses by his wife Rikke Malling, as well as beer glasses that were originally designed by Arne Jacobsen for the SAS Royal Hotel. Malling also created a cutlery tray so diners could reset their own table for each course. The new, and long-awaited addition of the Snøhetta cutlery completes the table setting.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website, the Table Noir website, and the Barr website

Snøhetta has completed its colourful fishing facility for the Holmen Industrial Area, in Northern Norway, on Sortlandssundet in the archipelago of Vesterålen, a historic fishing hub. The facility is considerate of the land and its environment, yet cutting-edge and forward-thinking in its approach to design and production.

The client, shipowner Holmøy Maritime, needed one site that could smoothly accommodate all employees and facilities in one place across 6,000sq m. Snøhetta carefully considered the layout that includes four distinctive buildings for trawling, fish farming and fish processing and the company’s headquarters. There is also a guest house for employees between shifts and an undulating park named ‘Lunden’, that was created with surplus excavation from the site.

Snøhetta carefully considered the fish trawlers pathway and daily activities, tracking the fish handling process from net to freezer to ship, to create the best possible conditions for employees and safe production. This saw the freezing terminal placed centrally within the facility, with possibilities for future expansion. While the facility is practical, the colourful building exteriors also make it a special place.

The red, orange, yellow and green colours were chosen to react with the light conditions – from December to January the Vesterålen takes on a distinctive blue darkness, while in summer, 24 hour daylight is dimmed by rain clouds. Materials include aluminum façade cladding and concrete floors chosen for durability, and following the typical industrial typology, yet the added colours and neat wayfinding system reference a corporate vision too.

The interior of the buildings is characterised by open-plan space and large windows, to allow as much light in as possible, and open up employees to the landscape. The colours defined in the exterior palette continue in contrast with light ash and birch woodwork.

Snøhetta designed a graphic pattern for the windows and sides of the freezing terminal inspired by fish scales that wraps around the architecture and also features in the Holmen Industrial Area's new logo, and can be seen in silver on the business cards and stationery.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website

‘We wanted to make a library that was absolutely intuitive, one where you could understand its entire floorplan as soon as you walked in the door,’ says Craig Dykers, founding partner at international architecture firm Snøhetta and lead architect on Calgary’s new Central Library. The way the architects achieved this level of legibility was by creating an elongated atrium – or pointed ellipse – surrounded by a promenade of attractive timber staircases and balustrades that overlap at slightly different angles, leading your eyes up floor-by-floor.

The library’s long and interesting curving form may never have happened if it weren’t for one of the project’s major constraints however: having to incorporate a light rail transit line on the site and provide access between the city’s downtown and the burgeoning new East Village neighbourhood beyond. The architects, who worked with Canadian firm DIALOG on this project, proposed to encapsulate the rail line and create a welcoming red cedar-lined arch with gently terraced slopes that would lead people both up into the building or through to the other side.

The form of the double-curved timber-lined shell references the unusual Chinook cloud formations common to this part of Canada explains Dykers: ‘They are gigantic, it’s as if the gods had created magnificent arches of clouds that go hundreds of miles in every direction.’

Inside, the library is characterised by hexagonal interlocking patterns on the windows and walls that signify community, but also bring to mind snow and ice flakes. The facades are composed of alternating panels of fritted glass and iridescent aluminium that allowed the architects to reduce the amount of glazing (and therefore cooling costs) of the building and enhance its sustainability.

Organisationally the spaces transition from louder and more ‘fun’ on the lower floors to more ‘serious’ and quiet on the upper floors. The ‘fun’ spaces include a state-of-the-art Children’s Library with playhouses and space for craft activities, early literacy programmes and full-body play, but everywhere inclusion and public access is key – the library offers almost 2,000 public seating spaces throughout its five floors.

On the uppermost accessible floor an elegant space with a circular skylight harks back to the great Victorian reading rooms of the past. With its ‘walls’ of vertical wood slats that allow fragments and framed views of the atrium and western façade beyond, it is both dynamic and intimate, encouraging quiet study and contemplation.

At CAN$245m Calgary’s brand new Central Library hasn’t come cheap, but its dynamic and soaring timber-lined interiors, its progressive services and programming for new Canadians and members of marginalised and at-risk communities and the way it successfully weaves together two previously cut-off neighbourhoods, are more than compelling justification for its price tag.

‘Civic architecture is losing ground to commercial architecture,’ says Dykers. While not everybody might agree that a library is as essential a service as a new road or a tunnel he continues, the new library was born out of the recognition that ‘culture is a foundation of society and the way we define ourselves.’

And of course, with increased tourism, residential development nearby and businesses moving into the area as a result, it will have beneficial knock-on effects for the local economy too. Calgary’s new central library is a civic building that manages to combine functionality, beauty and ambition; once inside you cannot help but feel uplifted.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website

The world of manufacturing has always been a hotbed for innovation and experimentation, often veering towards extremes, from the industrial revolution’s steampunk mess and hierarchical layouts, to modernism’s clinical tidiness and utopian dreams. In contrast, today’s factory is a much more elegant, informal and welcoming affair. Open and egalitarian, the 21st-century production facility promotes interaction and conviviality for its staff, but also invites the outside world in. Heralding a new architecture for the genre, here are three companies reinventing the way we approach, design and experience the modern making space.

Swarovski, Austria
Architects: Snøhetta

A busy, efficient factory can be an extraordinary thing to experience. More than a production facility, it can be a production in its own right; a choreographed dance between man and machine on constant repeat. This has never been more apparent than at Snøhetta’s extraordinary new building for Swarovski in Wattens. Here, high in the Austrian Alps, the manufacture of all the crystal conglomerate’s products will now be prominently on display in a vast, open space, which is more cultural destination than dark industrial park.

The Manufaktur building, which will officially open this spring, will include product showrooms, prototyping machinery and meeting spaces. Part of a €100m investment by Swarovski into a scheme to transform its manufacturing procedures and client relationships, it is one of three key new or revamped buildings. Campus 311, a former crystal-cutting factory, is being transformed into the new product development and innovation centre; while Focus Factory 2.0 is a new crystal-cutting centre that brings the entire production process under one roof.

With its sweeping central staircase, a Snøhetta hallmark, suspended floors and angular viewing platforms, the Manufaktur building has been designed in a way that will encourage its occupants to expand their view both literally and philosophically. Flooded with natural light, thanks to its innovative open-ceiling structure, and with expansive floors housing much of the machinery, the space is energising and elegant – a long way from the traditional industrial shop floor.

The vision, according to the Swarovski Group chairman Markus Langes-Swarovski, was to design the crystal workshop of the future. ‘The Manufaktur is a totally new typology,’ he says. ‘It’s a manufacturing facility, a showroom, a co-working space, a cathedral. Not because it’s a place of worship, but because when you’re in that building, it has a scale which I think creates a lot of humbleness in relation to the body, and yet, also, intimacy.’

The brief for the building, which is linked by a new footbridge to Campus 311, was to create a customer collaboration and co-creation centre that will see Swarovski’s clients, including major fashion houses, work directly with the product development teams. It fell naturally to long-time collaborator Snøhetta. The architecture practice, best known for the Oslo Opera House and Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina, also designed Swarovski’s Kristallwelten, a tourist destination that has become one of Austria’s most popular attractions since it opened in 1995.

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Snøhetta founding partner, is passionate about the new project’s potential. ‘It really is setting a new standard for inclusive fabrication facilities,’ he says. ‘Bringing clients, designers, artists, researchers, machine operators, technicians and the public under one roof is going to change how we think about these relationships in the future.’

The new facility will enable Swarovski to fast-track product development and collaboration with clients, allowing them to come up with product concepts and deliver them in a quarter of the time it would have taken in the past. ‘It’s a very holistic A-Z set-up, where people can see what happens in other departments,’ explains Langes-Swarovski. Considering it is a factory, it is indeed a surprisingly human-centric space. ‘We are not trying to use humans as machines. Machines can do that job much better now. So we wanted to build a context in which the human can become human again.’ The open design of the building will allow a ‘much higher hit rate for coincidences’, says Langes-Swarovski. ‘The architecture is forcing this kind of collaboration more than before. I’m really excited about what kind of things will happen in there.’

It is possible that in the not too distant future, the campus will become a stage for productions of an altogether different sort, engaging not just local but wider communities, too. ‘In keeping with gently opening up the company culture, we could think about opening it to the public 50 times per year,’ moots Langes-Swarovski. ‘Just with a small number of people – nothing dramatic.’ As we wait for his plans to crystallise, there’s no doubting Wattens is increasing its cultural clout.

Writer: Henrietta Thompson

Kvadrat, Denmark
Architects: SevilPeach

A small flock of Icelandic sheep gambol in a field, dodging artwork embedded in the turf. Hardly the view from most international HQs, but this is the seaside resort of Ebeltoft, Denmark, where Kvadrat has been based since 1968. The company operates from a 1980s Poulsen & Therkildsen-designed home, which has just been updated and extended by London-based architect firm SevilPeach to cope with a spectacular surge in sales – Kvadrat has tripled its revenue over the past seven years, and ships 14.4km of textiles each working day.

SevilPeach has created a visual link between a new showroom space and those staff working on Kvadrat’s future products. ‘We’ve knocked through the walls so that the new product development department has internal windows with vistas of the product,’ explains architect Sevil Peach. ‘It’s an emotional connection.’ In the main red-brick building, she and her team opened up the building to establish connections with the countryside. Desk-based staff are now in bright, airy rooms rather than small offices. And with the demolition of yet another wall, a former office was turned into a library, again with views of the landscape.

Peach has also unified the spaces by introducing swathes of colourful textiles, ‘almost like a coloured thread woven through the building’. Fabrics are used for their acoustic properties, draped on an extreme scale on three sides of the room and as 7m-tall doorways. ‘It’s about using textiles as an architectural intervention rather than just decorative,’ she adds.

Kvadrat’s 140 or so staff now have just over 12,000 sq m across the HQ. And as for the sheep, they have direct access to installations by landscape architect Günther Vogt, and artists Olafur Eliasson and Roman Signer. So everyone’s happy.

Writer: Clare Dowdy

Charlie Bigham’s, UK
Arhitects: Feilden Fowles

A typical location for a food processing plant is a vast out-of-town industrial estate, but for a company trying to stand out from the ready-meal crowd, an anonymous shed doesn’t cut the mustard. Which is why Charlie Bigham’s, which prides itself on preparing fresh ingredients by hand, took the audacious decision to bring in the architects and build a new home. The brand’s fish pies and chicken tikkas, marketed as the antidote to low-grade convenience food, are now made in a timber-clad, pitched-roofed, light-filled ‘kitchen’ courtesy of young London firm Feilden Fowles.

Charlie Bigham, who founded the business in his own kitchen in 1996, believes that the highest-quality food can only be produced in a high-quality working environment. But rather than extend his existing site on west London’s Park Royal Trading Estate, he has moved part of the business to a disused limestone quarry near his Somerset home. Here, Feilden Fowles’ £21m building has a backdrop of 50m-tall cliff walls of iron-rich stone, and shares the 18-acre site with peregrine falcons and great crested newts.

‘We wanted to get away from the standardised shed, which is low-ceilinged and windowless,’ explains project architect Elli Farrant. Instead, the firm turned to typical quarry vernacular, and found inspiration in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s iconic images of industrial buildings. Bigham wanted to foster a collaborative, non-hierarchical dynamic between the office and production staff. So Feilden Fowles set out to create a 6,500 sq m structure on a human scale and to make it as good a place to work as possible. Hence the asymmetric pitched roof line, with north-facing roof openings that let natural light into the building.

That structure means the ground-floor production facilities have 5m-high ceilings, a good 2m higher than those in standard sheds. Feilden Fowles’ involvement took the architects right on to the production floor, to make the flow of goods ‘as linear and efficient as possible’, with storage, cooking, assembling, chilling and dispatch all positioned in their logical order.

Instead of being located on the mezzanine, the open-plan office space overlooks the nearby quarry wall. That means suited staff are not peering down on to the shop floor through glass walls. Rather, the mezzanine houses a light-filled canteen, used by all. At the centre of the plan is the development kitchen, where Bigham concocts new recipes.

At the macro scale, the architects have considered the whole campus layout, grouping the buildings on the southern edge of the plot to leave the northern edge and its ecosystem in peace. The intention is to encourage yet more wildlife by eventually adding lagoons. Also on the drawing board are another two kitchens, a dispatch centre, visitors’ centre, pavilions in the landscape for the eventual 1,000 employees to take their lunch breaks, and a Bigham’s Academy.

‘To be a long-term business, you need to retain the best people, and to do that you need to create the best possible working environment,’ says Bigham. ‘For us, that’s about making a bit of a statement with our environment. And that means good architecture and a uniform you are proud to put on.’ Long-term for the founder means 20 years, a timescale he can work to, as the business owns the site. Gratifyingly, Feilden Fowles has also taken the long view. Hence the building’s rough-sawn Siberian larch timber exterior, which will take on a silver hue over time.

Writer: Clare Dowdy

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Swarovski website;
the Snøhetta website;
the SevilPeach website;
the Kvadrat website;
the Feilden Fowles website;
the Charlie Bigham website

Zalando beauty station, by Batek Architects, Berlin

Zalando has typically concerned itself with footwear, fashion and sportswear over the years. Widening its horizons, the online fashion platform has now entered the world of beauty, and has celebrated the occasion by extending its lone Berlin retail outlet with a new beauty station. Designed by Batek Architects, the modular space is minimal, combining a colour palette of cream, light beige, grey and nude shades with freely placeable stainless steel cubes, a shelf made from recycled plastic cups, stainless steel floor-to-ceiling shelves, a solid concrete washbasin and a 4m long stainless steel beauty service table.

Zalando, Weinmeisterstraße 2, 10178 Berlin, Germany; www.zalando.com. Writer: Luke Halls

Clean Market, New York City

The holistically-charged Clean Market has hit the streets of Manhattan. The surgery-clean, all-white destination spins on the notion of a classic day spa, instead calling upon infrared saunas, IV drips and cryotherapy treatments. The on-site Nutridrip drip lounge provides wellness-enhanced vitamin supplements, perpetuating the Clean Market ethos of beauty originating within. Read more about Clean Market here.

240 East 54th Street, New York, NY 10022. www.cleanmarket.com

Hershesons, London

Hershesons has opened the doors to its newest one-stop beauty salon flagship in Fitzrovia, London. The 5,000 sq ft space on Berners Street rejects conventional ideas surrounding the traditional salon model, with an approach it hopes is more relevant to how we live our lives now, combining a beauty space, co-working space and social space, wrapped into one, multi-functional (and stylish) model. Since its 1992 beginnings, Hershesons has championed groundbreaking ideas in beauty. A true frontrunner in industry-wide innovation, it invented concepts such as the straightening iron and blow-dry bars. Now, it seems, it is championing the ‘customer is king’ model in a beauty and grooming context, where services (including third-party offerings) are built entirely around you, your schedule, and lifestyle.

29-32 Berners St, Fitzrovia, London W1T 3LR. www.hershesons.com

Aesop, by Snøhetta, London

Designed by Norwegian interior architect and seven-time collaborator Snøhetta, Aesop’s 100 sq m Sloane Square flagship is a subtle choreography of light, warmth and scent. The minimalist beauty guru’s 200th location, pitched on the corner of Duke Square, and surrounded by a catalogue of elegant white-box stores, is rendered floor to ceiling in rust-red clay, inviting in passers-by from the Chelsea cold.

‘The idea of street presence was central for us,’ says senior architect Peter Girgis. ‘Originating and rising up from this large central element, we wanted warm-tones to beat out onto the street.’ A Devonshire clay-plaster column arches from the floor into what Girgis describes as ‘an architectural tree’. It spans the ceiling, covering it in a breathable, atmosphere-enhancing texture that will help to ventilate the lightly-scented space. The ‘trunk’ surrounds a 4.5 sq m ‘water table’ (pictured), upon which a slim veil of water cascades into four tin bath-sized fibre glass sinks, used for skin consultations.

Aesop, 22-24 Duke of York Square, London, England; www.aesop.com

86 Champs, by Laura Gonzales, Paris

Perfumer L’Occitane and ‘Picasso of pastry’ Pierre Hermé have created a hybrid ‘store’ on the Champs Élysées, designed to test our senses, and our preconceptions of what a beauty boutique should be.

Stalwarts of their respective industries, the two brands are natural bedfellows, sharing a heritage, luxury leaning. Intended to celebrate the high quality ingredients behind both, 86 Champs is a heady, fourfold experiment, offering a dessert bar for initiating yourself in the art of pastry, a coffee station for discovering ‘coffee according to Pierre Hermé’, and a restaurant, for a savoury interlude between dessert courses. Adding an olfactory twist, L’Occitane presents an interactive, in-store perfumery and scent installation, where guests come nose-to-nose with raw L’Occitane ingredients and production methods. Interior designer Laura Gonzalez aimed to create ‘a welcoming and refined place where objects, scents or tastes express osmosis between the two Maisons’.

86 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris, France; fr.loccitane.com

Riley Rose, by FutureBrand Uxus, Los Angeles

Millennial pink makes the girls and boys wink. At least that’s the thinking behind FutureBrand UXUS’s latest retail concept in Los Angeles. It's something a little different from the Amsterdam-based design studio, who are also behind Tate Modern’s innovative Switch House store. At Riley Rose, UXUS aims to ‘bring the social media experience to bricks and mortar’.

To do so, it has made the spaces wholly interactive, with product trial opportunities, so-called ‘shareable moments’, unique pop-ups and in-the-know staff on hand. A palate of blusher-pinks and smokey-eye greys complete the bubblegum-popping interiors, which despite their levity, are beautifully crafted and sensitively arranged in typical UXUS fashion.

Riley Rose, 2131 Galleria Way, Glendale, California 91210, USA; www.rileyrose.com

Miller Harris, by Fabled Studios, London

London-based perfume brand Miller Harris’ new flagship store surpasses fragrance shop expectations, transforming olfactory art into a multi-sensory ambush. Jackson Pollock-esque paint is artfully splattered across the walls, and a Tracey Emin-esque neon blinks on the wall.

Designed in collaboration with London’s Fabled Studio, the pocket-sized perfumery offers a colourful, exploratory haven in the midst of Canary Wharf’s bustling corporate rush. ‘We are giving the customer a full, 360-degree expression of each fragrance’, says Fabled’s co-founder Steven Saunders. Each scent has been married with a corresponding sound and texture, inviting visitors to not only smell but also ‘hear and feel’ their fragrance prior to making a selection. What’s more, a rotation of artists-in-residence will take over the space, bringing new meaning to the phrase ‘olfactory art’.

1 Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, London, England; www.millerharris.com

Buly 1803, by Arnault Castel, Hong Kong

Parisian apothecary Buly 1803 opened its first Hong Kong store recently in a snug new space on Wyndham Street. The brand, a revival of the historic perfume apothecary originally founded by Jean-Vincent Bully in 1803, (hence the name) was created in 2014 by Victoire de Taillac-Touhami and Ramdane Touhami who were inspired by 19th-century beauty secrets and ancient recipes.

Unlike many of the locations on our shortlist, which look ambitiously to the future, Buly 1802 looks ambitiously to the past. The couple’s local partner, Arnault Castel – founder of Kapok concept stores – was the first to spot the narrow 70 sq m location sporting unusual 5m high ceilings. ‘It is extremely small but our French carpenter hand-made floor-to-ceiling walnut cabinets to look just like they came from an ancient apothecary, so it feels like stepping into a small, historic chapel,’ Castel says. ‘We nicknamed it Charlotte because it reminds us of the French cake with “ladyfinger” biscuits.’

Buly 1803, 20 Wyndham St, Central, Hong Kong; www.buly1803.com

Tom Ford Beauty, London

Bringing things bang up to date is Tom Ford Beauty, which, if you’re familiar with the multi-discipline mogul’s aesthetic, will come as no surprise. His first ever stand-alone beauty store not only sets a new benchmark in glamour, but inspires in the field of tech-first retail design.

Tucked between the columns of the historic Covent Garden piazza, Tom Ford Beauty is made up of six specialised rooms comprising grey glass, marble counters, reflective surfaces galore, and the high(est) tech possible. Mirrors that record your make-up tutorials and email them to you in chapters – check. Virtual lip-stick trialling – check. Interactive perfume counter with vast LED screens – check. Downstairs, there’s even an intimate, invitation only consultation room, where you can try on the hottest new launches (virtually, of course).

Tom Ford Beauty, 3 The Market Building, Covent Garden, London, England; www.tomford.com/beauty

Stockholm Furniture Fair (6-10 February) has long been a fertile launch pad for Nordic brands, but increasingly its sphere of influence is spreading. International brands are unveiling new pieces which they would otherwise hold back for Milan. Portugese brand De La Espada released its entire 2018 collection in an elegant Stockholm apartment accompanied by a theatrical performance, Japanese brand Ariake had its first showing outside of Asia, and even Bar Basso’s famous cocktails made it to Stockholm, courtesy of Asplund who called on Maurizio Stocchetto, the bar’s proprietor, to cater its 25th anniversary party.

Note Design Studio

The Swedish firm joins forces with flooring company Tarkett on a layered stand design. Using structure, colour and shapes, ‘The Lookout’ displays homeware in a two-level interactive installation that engages visitors with flooring from a three-dimensional architectural viewpoint.

Ariake

This is Ariaki’s first showing outside of Asia following its launch last year. For Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair the Japanese brand collaborates with My Residence and lighting brand Wastberg for a unique installation of its pieces, telling the story of how they united international designers (Staffan Holm and Anderssen & Voll to name a few) with two Japanese manufacturers – Legnatec and Hirata Chair. The latest launch is a furniture series by Norm Architects that combines Danish cabinetmaking with bamboo construction and tatami mats (pictured)

Northern

New brand Northern has attracted the likes of designers Vera & Kyte, Färg & Blanche and Rudi Wulff to design its debut collection which consists of 24 pieces. The brand is the brainchild of Norway-based Ove Rogne, with the help of creative directors Morten Skjærpe Knarrum and Jonas Norheim who consider the aesthetic Norwegian at its core, but with international appeal

Nuura

New lighting brand on the block, Danish company Nuura is inspired by Nordic nature for its four-piece collection. Designer Sofie Refer, alongside co-founders Nadia Lassen and Peter Østerberg have realised the delicate, handblown collections that consists of raindrop-shaped pendants, chandeliers (one pictured), and modern table lamps

De La Espada

De La Espada releases new pieces by a coveted list of talents: Luca Nichetto (sofa pictured), Neri & Hu, Matthew Hilton and Jason Miller this year. The Portuguese furniture brand aimed to entertain with a theatrical launch which involved a mixed media performance inside a house once owned by ABBA’s former manager Stig Anderson, where the new furniture appeared inside different apartment set ups

Phloc: Swedish architects Mats Broberg and John Ridderstråle have created not only an elegant stand for Phloc lighting, but also its new 'Apollo' lights. They come in a range of colours and finishes, can be hung individually or grouped and are inspired by a plumb bob, a tool with a pointed weight on its end that architects use to ensure a vertical hang

Asplund: for the Palais series, Swedish designers Anya Sebton and Eva Lilja Löwenhielm were inspired by the 1986 exhibition of columns by French artist Daniel Buren in Paris’ Palais Royal. It consists of a cabinet, dining table and the two lounge tables with lacquered oak columns and oak or marble tops

Hi Thanks Bye: Chinese Canadian duo Topher Tong and Stein Wang are among the 37 young designers to show at Greenhouse, the area of the fair dedicated to emerging designers and design schools. Their six-piece collection is inspired by the natural beauty of Canadian islands such as Fogo, and Chinese classical forms

Muuto: Norwegian duo Anderssen & Voll have something of a reputation as sofa experts. Their 'Outline' collection for Danish company Muuto is upholstered in Kvadrat and Arve fabrics or leather. New for 2018 is a chaise longue version of all models. Last year, Knoll purchased 11-year-old Muuto and big plans are afoot

Snøhetta: the Norwegian architects launch their first lighting range with Swedish firm ateljé Lyktan. Titled 'Flik Flak,' the design harks back to school lighting with its flexible configuration of two wooden pieces of birch veneer held together by a piano hinge

INFORMATION

Stockholm Furniture Fair is on view from 6-10 February. For more information, visit the website

Snøhetta has already made its mark in New York City, with prominent projects, such as the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion and Slack’s offices in Lower Manhattan reaching completion in the past couple of years, and more, such as the reimagining of Philip Johnson’s mixed use 550 Madison Avenue, currently on the drawing boards.

A striking new residential tower at 50 West 66th Street is the latest on their list of high profile work at the Big Apple to be revealed – created, this time, for Extell Development Company. The project, a set of residences sat on a mixed use podium, is situated in Manhattan’s prestigious Upper West Side, with neighbours of the likes of Columbia University and the Lincoln Centre.

The architects opted for a building structure made up from a tower’s traditional elements – a base, a tall main body and a crown at the top – as a reference to the city’s rich legacy in high rises. Yet, there is a modern twist. The volume features cleverly chamfered corners, both at the top and the base of the podium, which soften its overall effect, articulating a refined silhouette, as the bulk of the tower is skilfully carved away.

Aiming to embrace the area’s architectural character, Snøhetta has worked with a material palette that reflects that of the surrounding urban realm. Hand-set and textured limestone, with bronze and glass storefronts feature on the tower’s lower levels. Two different entrances, one on the north side for the residences, and another on the 65th street’s side, which leads to a synagogue at the building’s base, highlight the structure’s mixed use nature.

A large terrace is formed at the top of the podium on the 16th level, as the building becomes slimmer and the residences are set back from the plot line. This stepped, planted outdoor space is part of the tower’s lush shared amenity spaces and offers wide views of the city, the Hudson River and Central Park. The high-rise’s slim form is topped by a chiseled crown, which is sure to make its mark within New York’s iconic skyline. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website

You might think Aesop’s 200th global store opening deserves a song-and-dance. But, the ever-understated Australian skincare stalwart has rung in its achievement in typical style – quietly. Designed by Norwegian interior architect and seven-time collaborator Snøhetta, the 100 sq m Sloane Square flagship is a subtle choreography of light, warmth and scent.

Pitched on the corner of Duke Square, surrounded by a catalogue of elegant white-box stores, the rust-red clay walls add texture behind four facade windows, inviting passers-by in from the Chelsea cold.

‘The idea of street presence was central for us,’ says senior architect Peter Girgis. ‘Originating and rising up of from this large central element, we wanted warm-tones to beat out onto the street.’

Said central element consists of a Devonshire clay-plaster clad column that arches out of the floor into what Girgis describes as ‘an architectural tree’. It spans the ceiling, covering it in a breathable, atmosphere-enhancing texture that will help to ventilate the lightly-scented space. The ‘trunk’ surrounds a 4.5 sq m ‘water table’, upon which a slim veil of water cascades into four tin bath-sized fibre glass sinks, used for skin consultations.

The interiors were devised in collaboration with Aesop’s longstanding in-house architect Jean-Philippe Bonnefoi, who provided Snøhetta with a mood-board of inspirations. ‘It included everything from music, notes about the local area, to movie-set scenography and Youtube clips of James Bond,’ explains project architect Gaute Simonsen.

Though the space doesn’t scream Die Another Day, Bond’s influence is ‘textually felt and implied’, says Girgis, in the space’s ‘slightly off notes’. Like the table full of vintage crystal-bottles holding unamed tipples (gin and vermouth perhaps?), or the so-bad-they’re-good Roger Moore-era corduroy chairs. These dressings – handpicked by Bonnefoi – add a comforting living-room feel to the otherwise highly conceptual, warmly-minimal space.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Aesop website and the Snøhetta website

ADDRESS

22-24 Duke of York Square
London, SW3 4LY

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Of all the pieces in this year’s Handmade show, few were as literal in their desire to transport worshippers at our temple of divine design to a higher plane as the mysterious ‘Portal’. Bringing together award-winning Norwegian architects Snøhetta with Erik Jørgensen Møbelfabrik, one of Denmark’s most iconic modernist manufacturers, and aided and abetted by dynamic Norwegian duo Marius Myking and Martin Nichols, of creative agency Everything Elevated, ‘The Portal’ is a sculptural piece designed to be a literal representation of a path to the infinite beyond.

The project was a true collaboration between these three Scandinavian outfits. Their very secular approach to sacred spaces invoked spiritual drama with a combination of exceptional craft, clever design and striking simplicity. The prime directive for this particular piece was to draw the eye upwards and inwards, showcasing Erik Jørgensen’s attention to detail without the object getting lost in the exhibition space.

‘Erik Jørgensen’s CEO, Niels Jørgensen, came to us for a workshop in Oslo,’ says Snøhetta’s Stian Alessandro Ekkernes Rossi. ‘The company had already been thinking about the project for a while.’ Initial suggestions sought ways of translating Erik Jørgensen’s sublimely elegant seating products into some kind of hallowed hideout. Snøhetta and Everything Elevated worked with the manufacturer on a more abstract way of incorporating craft and materials into a piece that fulfilled the brief, as well as making a suitable statement in our Handmade space in Milan’s Mediateca Santa Teresa, with its high ceiling and columns.

We all wanted a vertical contribution to this lofty building – after all, encouraging people to look up is a fundamental aspect of any religious structure. Erik Jørgensen, Snøhetta and Everything Elevated had other ideas, namely a way of implying the infinite in an object that could also be taken in at a glance (and was easy to ship). Niels Jørgensen spoke of the importance of ‘creating something simple’, and so the most universal means of ascending – the stairway – was deployed, but with a twist.

‘The Portal’ is a metaphorical gateway to something, a ladder trapped between two voids, each represented by a circular mirror affixed to a circular plinth. In between the mirrors, one experiences the classic ‘infinity’ effect of reflections stretching away into the distance. Yet from without, the object is sculptural, monolithic and just a little mysterious. ‘The idea for the portal arose out of ways to approach the brief without being too explicit,’ says Rossi, diplomatically. ‘We also wanted to show handcraft and detail.

‘We began by thinking about the specific site in the church,’ he continues. ‘Again, it wasn’t about a specifically religious approach, but it needed a slightly “holy” appearance when you approach the piece. Also, it really stands out by being elevated.’ Rossi adds that the idea of going up and down, escaping into another dimension or simply marvelling at the depth of the journey, was a driving force behind the design.

Helping to get the project off the ground was Everything Elevated. Based in Oslo and New York, the creative agency already had an established relationship with Snøhetta. ‘They have a very open working environment, so they invited us to help create something magnificent in this very tight time frame,’ says Nichols. ‘We have a strong strategic approach and sometimes that’s the most important thing in a project.’

Everything Elevated helped to bridge the worlds of architecture and furniture. ‘We quickly went to 1:1 scale and Everything Elevated helped us with renderings and visualisations,’ Rossi says. ‘It’s the way we work in architecture as well.’

‘The Portal’ was made in Erik Jørgensen’s workshop at its Copenhagen headquarters in Pakhus 48, a new design zone in Freeport, by the same talented craftspeople who assemble the brand’s furniture. ‘We supplied detailed drawings,’ Rossi says. ‘It has its own carpenters. We spent a long time talking about materials.’ The end result is refined, elegant and with the same detail and quality found in one of Erik Jørgensen’s chairs. The rungs of the ladder are in black-stained solid oak, with the vertical bars upholstered in black Cohiba leather featuring a prominent and precise central seam of stitches. Thus, the piece repays close attention as well as drawing you in from a distance.

Ultimately, ‘The Portal’ spans the realms in which Snøhetta currently finds itself operating. ‘It deals with the multi-tasking nature of both product design and architecture,’ says Rossi. ‘We’re increasingly drawn into the world of product design. The things that really catch our attention at the moment are installations that are more than just furniture or just architecture.’ Snøhetta’s current portfolio is certainly striking out from a straightforward architectural practice. From exhibition design through to interiors and even branding, the firm is now a global concern. Key projects include New York’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the multi-faceted gem that is Oslo’s Opera House and the recently opened Lascaux IV: The International Centre for Cave Art in France, as well as masterplans, sculptural landscape projects and even designs for Norwegian banknotes.

In contrast, Erik Jørgensen Møbelfabrik is a classic example of modern design rendered faithfully, truthfully and with utter precision. Founded in Svendborg, Denmark, in 1954 by the saddlemaker and upholsterer Erik Jørgensen, the company now has a roster of modernist classics in its portfolio, including chairs by Hans J Wegner and Poul M Volther, as well as numerous collaborations with contemporary designers. This core of Scandinavian functionalism is never far from the immaculate surface of ‘The Portal’. ‘The whole piece is mountable with just two or three screws,’ says Rossi. And although timings for finishing and transportation to Milan were inevitably tight, he admits that ‘we managed to get in a small photo session before it left’.

So will there be more portals in the future? Both Snøhetta and Everything Elevated seem happy for it to remain a oneoff. ‘It’s great that there’s only one,’ Rossi says, adding that this singularity enhances the spiritual qualities of the piece. ‘We all agree that making the piece transportable was vital – wherever it pops up, it looks fantastic.’

After Milan, ‘The Portal’ returned to Copenhagen, where it took pride of place in the Erik Jørgensen showroom. Its next port of call is Singapore (as part of Wallpaper* Handmade On Tour), where it will bring its fusion of form, craft and mystery to a whole new audience. Onwards and upwards.

As originally featured in the August 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*221)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Erik Jørgensen website and the Everything Elevated website

Snøhetta has descended upon Aut gallery in Innsbruck, Austria. The Norwegian architecture practice has built several social environments across the gallery spaces that encourage users to climb, lean and linger.

Site-specific installations of angular flooring, light boxes of landscapes and geometric timber cages have all been designed to activate people’s experiences of space and light. Titled ‘Relations’, the exhibition celebrates the fruitful partnerships between Snøhetta and its many collaborators, that can be seen across numerous projects during which expertise has been exchanged and innovations have been developed. Drawings, prototypes, models and photos are displayed side-by-side on archive tables exploring the depth of the relationships.

INFORMATION

‘Snøhetta: Relations’ is on view until 7 October. For more information, visit the Aut website

ADDRESS

Aut
im Adambräu
Lois Welzenbacher Platz 1
6020 Innsbruck

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Left, the new dining room is furnished with ‘108’ chairs, by Finn Juhl; ‘Riverstone’ tables, by Jonas Lyndby Jensen; and curtains made of ‘Daybreak’ fabric, by Patricia Urquiola for Kvadrat. Lining the walls and ceiling are bespoke wooden elements, carved by local carpenters Malte Gormsen. Right, lead interior architect Peter Girgis, of Snøhetta, Barr managing director Thomas Møller Jensen and executive chef Thorsten Schmidt at Barr.

Strandgade 93, Copenhagen is perhaps the most illustrious address in contemporary gastronomy. In the 18th-century warehouse with a façade of whitewashed brick, and views of the city’s inner harbour, lies the HQ of Noma, a family of restaurants that has pioneered the New Nordic movement, and incubated more international culinary talents than anybody except the now-defunct El Bulli. The first floor currently houses Noma’s office and test kitchen, led by co-founder and head chef René Redzepi, while the ground floor was for 14 years home to its eponymous flagship restaurant. Until February, that is, when the restaurant closed its doors and affirmed its plans to reopen near the roughand- tumble neighbourhood of Christiania by the end of the year (a seven-week pop-up ran in Tulum, Mexico in the interim).

While fans have trained their eyes on this audacious act of reinvention, another new member of the Noma family has been quietly in the works, set to occupy the hallowed grounds of the original restaurant. So far little has been revealed, barring a sign on the front door with the message, ‘Something new is cooking here…’. This is something of an understatement given the formidable talents behind the new project – executive chef Thorsten Schmidt, Norwegian architects Snøhetta and serial entrepreneur Thomas Møller Jensen, who has been brought on board as managing director. Come early July, they will be reopening the ground-floor space as a new restaurant, called Barr.

An old friend of Redzepi’s, Schmidt is one of the top names in Nordic cuisine. He and his wife, Rikke Malling, ran an acclaimed restaurant, Malling & Schmidt, in Aarhus between 2005 and 2012. Since then, he has consulted, travelled, judged the Wallpaper* Best Urban Hotels awards (see W*174), and even developed a Danish dinner for the International Space Station’s astronauts.

‘For over a decade now, everybody has been looking to the north, which is very exciting,’ says Schmidt in the private dining room of the former Noma. ‘Noma created a blueprint, a way of thinking about food, an awareness of our surroundings. It has been hugely influential, but few people are able to experience it. Through Barr, we want to reach out and give access to a broader audience.’ Schmidt also aims to bring together different strains of Scandinavian cuisine: ‘Right now the culinary landscape is split between the new Nordic and the old-fashioned. But these two are very much connected. As a chef, you should relate to them as one.’

He pulls up a map on his tablet computer that shows the alcohol belts of Europe – each region colour-coded by its predominant alcoholic beverage. Denmark, Germany, the Low Countries and the British Isles form a beer belt, while an aquavit belt encompasses Norway, Sweden and the Baltics. ‘Beer and aquavit are in our blood and tradition,’ he explains. Similar climates, languages with shared roots and ongoing trade gave rise to common culinary practices, among them salting, smoking, pickling and fermenting. Barr, which means ‘barley’ in Old Norse, encompasses ‘the kitchens of the Northern Oceans’, while adding a touch of modern Scandinavian refinement.

This philosophy is reflected in a seasonal, à la carte menu including dishes that some may consider unfashionable – schnitzel, frikadeller, warm smoked salmon. ‘If you don’t know anything about food, you’ll just think that our salmon is tasty,’ says Schmidt. ‘But if you’re a total foodie, you will ask, “How do you keep the moisture? And what sauce do you glaze it with?” By exploring these deeper layers, we ensure the dish is there for the future. My dream is that some of our ideas will end up on family dinner tables.’ Reinforcing Schmidt’s belief that food and social interaction go together, Barr will have a mix of individual servings and larger dishes intended for sharing, and to encourage spontaneity, some tables will be held for walk-ins. ‘It’s not about fine dining,’ adds Jensen, ‘though we are bringing in Noma’s intelligence and experience. We’re not looking to provide theatre, but rather a great meal, in a great atmosphere.’

Riffing on the theme of a common cuisine for the Northern Oceans, Schmidt and Jensen looked beyond Denmark and asked if Norwegian architects Snøhetta would design the space and identity. Within 20 minutes of their email invitation, Snøhetta wrote back to invite the Barr team to Oslo, to get to know them and their ambitions. ‘We wanted a full collaborative approach,’ says Peter Girgis, the lead interior architect on the project. As such, Schmidt and Jensen have been involved in the every step of the design process. The overall concept is based on the working philosophy of the restaurant, ‘gestalt’, which refers to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Snøhetta zoomed into the molecular structure of beer and found organic, bubble-like shapes.

They took a 3D diagram of the space, and filled it with enlarged versions of these bubbles. The negative space was then translated into large, gently curved wooden elements, which are now installed on the walls and in the gaps between the ceiling beams, cleverly circumventing the restrictions of designing for a listed building. Made of oak, these have been carved and assembled by local carpenters Malte Gormsen, who worked on the original Noma as well as 108, the other Noma group restaurant on Strandgade. Meanwhile the old Noma floors, which are wide planks of Dinesen oak, have been sanded and refinished. The result is cosy but light, rather resembling a wooden cave.

The 65-seat main dining room has tables of varying heights, each with a distinct perspective, ‘so if you’re a regular, it will never be the same experience’, explains Schmidt. In between two original wooden columns, Snøhetta has inserted a custom made high table, in a nod to Viking banqueting practices. Elsewhere, diners will gather at Jonas Lyndby Jensen’s ‘Riverstone’ tables, made from oiled oak with an ovoid top – a design that happens to be inspired by a dish served at Noma. Seating is a mix of Finn Juhl’s ‘108’ chairs with bespoke upholstery, and stools by Rakel Karlsdóttir.

Schmidt worked with ceramicist Kasper Würtz to design a collection of plates in three neutral tones. ‘I wanted them to be soft to the touch. This meant there could be no glazing, and therefore demanded the highest level of craftsmanship. The shapes are very natural,’ he explains. Accompanying these are water glasses by his wife Rikke Malling, as well as beer glasses that were originally designed by Arne Jacobsen for the SAS Royal Hotel. Malling also created a cutlery tray so diners could reset their own table for each course, while Snøhetta is currently working on a bespoke cutlery set.

Barr’s ethos is also reflected in the menu design, consisting of papers coloured by category, attached by a brass rivet to a sheet of oak, embossed with a microscopic image of Danish ale. In collaboration with Camelot Typefaces, Snøhetta have created a new typeface, Barr Gräbenbach.

The adjoining bar has a more casual layout, and offers hearty snacks such as grilled duck hearts and solæg (Danish pickled egg). The beers on tap include house brews, as well as offerings from up-and-coming breweries. In addition to the brewer and a sommelier, Barr also has a mixologist specialising in beer and aquavit cocktails. ‘We have a lot of geeks, capable people who want to tell the story of Barr, to show what the difference can be when you put your mind to your craft, and work with the best products you can get,’ says Schmidt. ‘We have all been brought together by common respect for each other’s craft. René and Peter [Kreiner, managing director of Noma Group] once said, “We want to be partners only with people we can see ourselves getting old with”. This is why we’re working together.’

As originally featured in the July 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*220)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Barr website

ADDRESS

Barr, Strandgade 93, Copenhagen

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Joining the lofty collection of tree houses among the pine forests in Swedish Lapland, is the Treehotel’s seventh offering, this time designed by the Norwegian firm Snøhetta – the most prominent architects to have contributed to the property so far.

Simply called The 7th Room, the timber structure is the highest of the houses at 10m and is the only one with a rope net suspended between the two bedrooms, for open-air stargazing. Inside, warmth is provided by way of a flickering log fire, while a pared down interior of blonde woods, grey accents and cosy fur throws do not detract from the snowy landscape views, which are further enhanced by large panoramic windows and skylights- also strategically placed to make the most of the elusive Northern Lights.

Back on the ground, a 10-minute walk away past the other rooms including the UFO and the Bird’s Nest houses, meals of reindeer or arctic char are served at Britta’s Pensionat, the guesthouse, from which this now world-famous hotel was launched.

ADDRESS

Edeforsvägen 2A
960 24 Harads

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When Norwegian architects Snøhetta were invited to compete for a new museum at France’s world-renowned cave painting site Lascaux, founding partner Kjetil Thorsen admits to being ‘a bit frightened’. But this cocktail of fear and respect paid off, because the firm pipped Jean Nouvel (among others) to the post. This must have been galling for the Frenchman, as he was born nearby in 1945, just five years after the paintings were discovered, outside the town of Montignac, in the Dordogne.

The Lascaux cave paintings, which date back around 20,000 years, are nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of prehistory. They have been closed to the public since 1963 to protect them, so a copy was constructed nearby in the early 1980s as a mock-up experience for visitors. However, it is now deemed too close to the original site.

Snøhetta’s new International Cave Art Centre opened in December 2016, on a piece of nearby farmland framed by a wooded hillside. Thorsen likens the centre to ‘an incision in the landscape where you pull up the landscape and look under it’. Inside, the inclined walls have random horizontal stripes sandblasted into them, to suggest geological layers. By embedding the building in the land, Thorsen has been able to play with scale. ‘We design big buildings to look slightly smaller [than they are] so you get a surprise with the internal space,’ he says.

For Lascaux, he created a shallow glass-fronted foyer, behind which there are ever deeper and darker exhibition spaces. The €57m venue, commissioned by the Conseil Général de la Dordogne, must fulfil a number of roles. Hence the six gallery zones created by London exhibition specialists Casson Mann to answer, ‘as far as possible, the questions that visitors have after seeing Lascaux’, says co-founder Dinah Casson.

But the big draw is an exact replica of the original caves, reached by leaving the building and walking up the sloped roof to another entrance. This is a reference to the way four local boys and a dog originally discovered them in the 1940s – through a hole in the ground. The cave environment and its artworks were painstakingly recreated over four years at the Atelier des Fac-Similés du Périgord by 30 artists specialising in Palaeolithic techniques. To add to the cave-like ambience, the temperature is set at 12°C and humidity at 80 per cent.

Dinah Casson points out that a lot of the museum’s visitors will be holidaymakers on the hunt for something to do in bad weather, but the venue will also appeal to people with a genuine interest in Palaeolithic art. And as one of Snøhetta’s very few French buildings, it might even become a destination for fans of the Norwegians’ work.

As originally featured in the March 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*217)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Snøhetta website, or the Casson Mann website

After 45 years of showing modern and contemporary art at their gallery near Union Square, now San Francisco’s hub of fine hotels and high-end retail, John and Gretchen Berggruen considered closing the doors permanently to pursue private sales. Skyrocketing rents in the area had driven out many of their established colleagues and they too were feeling the pressure, too. They could retire and still take credit for building the reputations of Bay Area artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn. In their small but wealthy community, they had cultivated a dedicated group of collectors. 

But in February last year, a tantalising opportunity presented itself: a 1908 brick building in the historic district close to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which was recently expanded by Snøhetta and is now the second largest art museum in the US. Once a restaurant, the structure was also adjacent to the brick building owned by Crown Point Press, in which Larry Gagosian opened a gallery in spring 2016. The remarkable location alone seemed a sign to carry on. 

Gretchen’s daughter Jennifer Weiss, an architect based in San Francisco, took on the substantial renovation of the two-storey, 10,000 sq ft building. The structure is situated in a historic preservation zone, so the challenges were considerable and time consuming, from installing white sheetrock over red-brick interior walls to constructing a glass staircase that connects the subterranean galleries and storage with the central gallery and top-floor offices. 

‘I thought, what a wonderful project. Boy, was I a fool,’ says John, 73, good-naturedly. Gretchen, 71, agrees: ‘It was more demanding than we expected.’ Their new gallery finally opened in January with an exhibition titled ‘The Human Form’ (the pair have long championed the figurative tradition), with paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso and George Condo. 

Their wide-ranging passions and curatorial smarts are also on view at their home in the historic district of Russian Hill. One of few residences to survive the 1906 earthquake, the 1854 shingle-covered house has stunning views of the bay and downtown. In 1998, it was restored and renovated by architect Robert AM Stern, who described it as ‘one of the oldest houses on one of the highest points in the city’. 

The walls of each room display the Berggruens’ own significant collection. The top-floor living space is anchored by a 1968 David Hockney painting of a window looking out over sailing boats – it’s a good match for their own windows and vista. On the opposite wall is Ed Ruscha’s 1972 word painting Faith, while the dining room features large works by Diebenkorn and Helen Frankenthaler. Modern furnishings are mixed with sleek antiques. The late Randolph Arcinsky, of furniture company Randolph & Hein, assisted with the decor and John purchased many of the art deco and Biedermeier pieces to be incorporated into the design. It is not a showroom, but a place where people are welcomed and entertained.

Gretchen says one motivating factor for continuing to operate a gallery was going through their own archives, to compile the 2015 exhibition and catalogue ‘Looking Back: 45 Years’. This reminded the Berggruens that, in addition to many artists from the Bay Area, they had given the first West Coast show to American modernist Georgia O’Keeffe and regularly presented Los Angeles artists such as Ruscha. To stage the ‘Looking Back’ exhibition, they borrowed some 40 pieces from collections they had helped to build. ‘It’s the creative part of the work,’ says Gretchen.

Seeing what they had accomplished re-energised them. ‘It gave me the sense that there was so much more that could come to a city like this. If we want to stay viable, we need to keep our programme as vibrant as it has been in the past,’ Gretchen adds.

With cash-rich tech titans and venture capitalists now abundant in the Bay Area and throughout northern California, the pair find themselves working with younger generations of aspiring collectors. The Berggruens, both charming and erudite, hope to continue educating and placing artists’ work with these freshly curious entrepreneurs and professionals.

Yet the very factors that have created a new collecting class are also driving out the creative class, the artists who once lived comfortably in the Bay Area. The Berggruens now look to the East Coast and elsewhere for their new artists. To carry on in this environment, they have reached out to those who have not had much exposure in the Bay Area, such as internationally recognised New York-based artist Spencer Finch. ‘We love the interchange between artists and collectors,’ says Gretchen. ‘And galleries in Europe are great as collaborators,’ adds John. 

John comes from solid art-professional stock. During the Second World War, his German father, Heinz, lived in San Francisco and was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. When John was two, his parents divorced (his mother was Lillian Zellerbach, of a prominent San Francisco family) and Heinz moved back to Europe. A brief affair with Frida Kahlo contributed to the break-up.

John remained in the US while, across the Atlantic, his father continued to build a respected collection of modern art, including serious holdings of work by Paul Klee. Last autumn, the majority of Heinz’s donation of 90 works by Klee was shown at the Met Breuer museum in New York, and other collections are housed in the Museum Berggruen in Berlin. John believes his passion for art comes from ‘genetic transference’ rather than environmental influence; his half-brothers are art historian and curator Olivier Berggruen and billionaire collector and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen.

John opened his gallery in 1970. In 1978, Gretchen started working with him, having been involved in public art projects. John credits her with much of their success. ‘It was a galactic shift,’ he says. ‘She brought sensitivity as well as structure to the business.’ Nine years later, they were married. John, never missing the opportunity for a joke, says, ‘She wanted a raise. I told her I have another idea.’ And now the genetic transference continues: their son, Alex, works in contemporary art at Christie’s in New York. 

Now that the new gallery is open, John can put all the irritation over delays and expenses behind him. It is time to move forward. With the animated expression of a young boy, he exclaims, ‘It is exciting for us.’

As originally featured in the April 2017 issue of Wallpaper (W*217)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Berggruen Gallery website

Snøhetta, the internationally renowned practice of architecture, plus landscape, interior and brand design, has collaborated with Aesop on the design of one of their Germany-based stores, located in Düsseldorf’s Grabenstraße. This is Aesop’s first store opening in Düsseldorf, and the second store in Germany to be designed by Snøhetta, preceded by Aesop Fasanenstraße in Berlin.

Designed to be an implicit extension of the plaza where the store is located, which is often host to a variety of markets and fairs, the minimal design of the retail space successfully highlights Aesop’s products. 

Blonde-hued Douglas fir shelving curves over the walls, creating a crescent that envelops the customer, whilst embedded downlights from the ceiling follow the same pattern. A monolithic concrete sink, reminiscent of Düsseldorf’s local fountains, has been centrally located in order for customers to wash their hands, test products and follow demonstrations, amplifying the subtle blur between interiors and exteriors. 

Two timber benches fitted with planter boxes further extend this interior-exterior relationship, as they have been placed just beyond the store’s stone facade, inviting visitors to sit and linger in the shade outside.

After the recent opening of Aesop’s retail space in Berlin, Düsseldorf becomes the fifth collaboration between the Australian skincare brand and Snøhetta.

INFORMATION

For more information on the project, visit Snøhetta’s website

Photography: Snøhetta

ADDRESS

12 Dusseldorf, Kasernenstraße 10, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany

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Snøhetta has been busy of late. As well as unveiling the highly anticipated San Francisco Museum of Modern Art extension and polishing off the landscape design of Lund’s MAX IV laboratory, the Oslo-based design and architecture practice has now also launched a new signature store for Australian beauty brand Aesop in Singapore. 

Their second designer boutique in Singapore, Aesop ION also marks the fourth Snøhetta-designed Aesop store globally (adding to their tally in Oslo, Berlin and Singapore).

Mace pink walls brighten up the space and complement the brass accents of the boutique, which include functional elements like a long sales counter and a trio of sinks, gleaming under the overhead lighting. 

The rather sparse decor at eye level – the focus is kept on the products and their packaging – is the mirror opposite of the ceiling, which is covered in timber battens of different lengths, tones and materials, described as ‘an upside-down forest’; hanging down to form walls that curve throughout the space like trunks in a grove. The intentional forest motif pay tribute to the store’s location, Orchard Road, which was once a nutmeg plantation. 

In short, it is nothing less than we’d expect from Aesop. Or Snøhetta, for that matter.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Aesop’s website

Photography courtesy of Aesop

ADDRESS

Aesop ION
#B3-66/66A ION Orchard
2 Orchard Turn
Singapore 238801

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After three years of waiting, the time has arrived. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) is getting ready to kick open the doors to its ten-story expansion by the architecture firm Snøhetta on 14 May.

The Bay Area’s fog and water inspired the new edifice's sweeping and sinewy east facade, made with 700 uniquely molded, fibreglass-reinforced polymer panels. The silvery structure is a stark departure from the red brick-ensconced existing building, by Mario Botta.

'Buildings are like dancing partners,' says Snøhetta co-founder Craig Dykers. 'You don’t want to repeat what the other is doing because you’ll step on their toes.' The two structures are connected by a seismic joint that visitors can see through glass viewers, but the boundary doesn’t draw attention to itself, as the two buildings flow as one without obvious demarcations. Moving between the buildings, Dykers says, 'shouldn’t be a jarring experience, but the museum-goers will have some awareness'.

As opposed to the formally predictable symmetry of Botta’s design, for instance, the new building features more versatile exhibition spaces. (Check out the room in the new wing displaying Agnes Martin paintings, which curators configured to be an octagonal space.)

At 235,000 sq ft, the Snøhetta addition more than doubles the museum’s total space. But the new landmark weighs less than the old structure by employing materials like lightweight cement and sand from nearby Monterey Bay. On track to receive LEED Gold certification, the new gallery spaces use energy-saving ambient LED lighting tucked above undulating ceiling panels calibrated to avoid light scallops. 

Other notable features include six outdoor terraces, including the second-floor sculpture gallery that exhibits works by Alexander Calder against America’s largest public living wall by Habitat Horticulture, consisting of over 19,000 plants including 21 native Northern Californian species.

Spatial and metaphorical openness is among the most emphasised elements, with 43,000 sq ft earmarked for free access. Two entrances on different streets allow pedestrians to pass through the museum’s ground-floor spaces, including a glass-fronted gallery inaugurated with Richard Serra’s 235-ton sculpture Sequence. SFMoMA will soon be open, in every sense of the word.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Snøhetta's website

ADDRESS

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 3rd Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

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Designing the landscape for a high-performance synchrotron radiation laboratory is as difficult as it sounds, but international architecture and design practice Snøhetta have made it look rather simple. 

To balance the high tech within – the Fojab Arkitekter-designed laboratory houses two new next-generation particle accelerators – Snøhetta have chosen to take a rather low-tech approach with their landscape design. Opening its doors last week, the advanced research laboratory MAX IV, a national centre operated jointly by the Swedish Research Council and Lund University, is the first structure of the future 'Science City' taking shape in the Brunnshög area northeast of Lund. 

Using a (seemingly) simple, albeit highly effective, wave field landscape, the architects help mitigate ground vibrations from the neighbouring highway that would otherwise negatively impact the sensitive research inside the lab. Rather than importing new soil to create a wavelike surface, they shifted earth on site. Adding to the sustainability of the design, while adhering to local rules and regulations on water usage, there is a built-in storm water management system which will collect and store water on site. The surrounding meadowland will be grazed upon by sheep and maintained using conventional machines, growing locally-sourced, native vegetation. 

'In MAX IV, the process was like having a giant 3D printer producing the project on a 1:1 scale,' explain the architects. 'The high-tech research facility, together with the low-tech meadowland, creates the iconic image of the waves, that protects the research facility from the vibrations.'

The process behind the parametrically-designed landscape is the result of extensive 3D modelling. Snøhetta translated the nature of vibrations into a set of rational values and plotted them accordingly, to correlate with the planned positions of future laboratories. The first set of waves were pinpointed, followed by more waves which spiral out from the central electron storage ring, stretching out the site boundary. The result is an altogether rather natural approach to a decidedly modern challenge. 

INFORMATION

For more information on the MAX IV laboratory landscape, visit Snøhetta's website

The unexpected and previously unexplored parallels between the work of Edvard Munch and Robert Mapplethorpe are the subject matter of a new exhibition – ’Mapplethorpe + Munch’ – at Oslo’s Munch Museum, designed by international architecture and brand design firm Snøhetta.

The fourth in an ambitious series of six ’+ Munch’ exhibitions at the Norwegian museum, this latest installments marks perhaps the most surprising – if not most ‘contemporary’ – pairing yet (previous ’+ Munch’ dialogues have featured the work of Munch-era artists like Van Gogh and Vigeland). But despite their many differences, similarities arise between the Norwegian expressionist painter and the American photographer, due in great part to the medium in which they are presented. 

Both the exhibition and the catalogue follow the flow of curator Jon-Ove Steihaug’s essay, which compares and contrasts the two artists. To begin the exhibition, Snøhetta have created a cleansing threshold of large-scale, shredded banners. Emblazoned with the exhibition’s title, the banner’s graphic, bold black and white lettering plays with perspective as you pass through, making the once clear title an abstract and near indistinguishable start. ‘The transition from ordinary life into the fictitious world of art thus becomes both a sensory and mind-cleansing experience,’ explains the design firm. 

Colour plays an active role throughout the exhibition itself; not in the traditional sense of the art (most all of the 141 photographs of Mapplethorpe’s on show are in black and white, with only a sparing few of Munch’s 95 pieces employing colour) but in the walls on which it hangs. A deep blueish-grey tint serves as the main canvas, contrasted sharply by the fleshy pink hue of the first room and exit. Partition walls running parallel with the longest walls of the museum are painted white, in sharp juxtaposition with the sombre black walls that accommodate the most controversial images on show. 

Also responsible for the design of an accompanying catalogue, Snøhetta have devised a concept that mirrors the exhibition’s bold colour choices, most readily on the cover. The same pink tint of the entrance features here, balanced with the shredded banner’s graphic font in debased black foil and double portrait. The inner layout features images gravitating towards the bottom of the pages, with generous space above allowing the contrasts in both artists’ work to stand clear. Technical information at the back of the book gains a new, textural dimension with the use of matte paper.  

INFORMATION

’Mapplethorpe + Munch’ is on view until 29 May. For more information, visit the Munch Museum’s website

ADDRESS

Munch Museum
Tøyengata 53
0578 Oslo

Located on the corner of Downtown Toronto's Yonge and Gould streets, the angular patterned glass facade of Ryerson University's new Student Learning Centre functions as a glittering gateway linking a major commercial thoroughfare and an academic campus.

Designed by international practice Snøhetta and Canadian architectural firm Zeidler Partnership Architects, the eight-level, 14,200 sq m building was inspired by the historical gathering spaces of the Stoas and Agoras in ancient Greece where learning was very much a social activity. Described by Snøhetta as a 'library without books', the forward-thinking design promotes collaboration with its open plan layouts and informal seating areas, an idea that is perfectly demonstrated by 'The Beach', a dedicated open and informal study space that spans the entire sixth floor with several small terraces linked by ramps and gentle steps.

On the ground floor, a south facing, raised platform that's part plaza, part porch, opens up to the street corner sheltered by a sloping canopy clad in iridescent, hand-folded metal panels. This stretches from the exterior facade into the lobby channeling the daylight into the large atrium space with an integrated late night study zone and café. Learning zones and digital media activities can be found on the first floor, hovering above the entrance space, while a broad stair from the lobby leads up to a bridge that connects the new centre to an existing, historical library building. On the eigth floor, a sky terrace offers students plenty of natural light and inspiring views across the city.

Decorated with asymmetrical shapes, the digitally printed glass that cloaks the building controls transmitted light, solar gain, privacy, and frames views of the city.

Our longstanding love affair with the Aussie skincare label, goes far beyond its conscious formulations and pretty packaging. The individualized, design savvy approach that the company takes towards each of its boutiques is enough to push any cynic clean over the edge.

Over the last 28 years, Aesop has carefully assembled an array of un-missable stores by working with a range of emerging architects to create separate identities for each outpost. The fruits of its creative efforts have now been immortalized as a microsite called , an online archive of stores that showcases the creative processes, materials and features of each location – perfect for those who can’t visit all in person.

Each boutique is presented with a vivid description, along with sumptuous images of the materials used in the space and its trademark features. From the white oak-lined  in Boston to the pink walled , located in an old Victorian manor house, each space is a distinctive treasure to behold.

The site also features a series of film interviews with partner architects and designers, such as , who created a reverent, church-like space for the Prinsengate boutique in Oslo, and  and  who designed a modernist interior for the Sao Paolo store. Easily organized by locale, materials or signature features, the site is a seductive visual glossary that spins the conventions of retail architecture and design on its head.

INFORMATION

Website

Swarovski has unveiled a series of innovative new buildings and exhibits as part of a major expansion of its Kristallwelten ('Crystal World') in the picturesque village of Wattens, Austria, where the family-owned brand was established 120 years ago.

The revamped 7.5-hectare complex dedicated to all things crystal reflects the company's close collaboration over the past two decades with leading designers, ranging from John Pawson, Tom Dixon and Zaha Hadid to Naoto Fukasawa, Arik Levy and Ross Lovegrove.

The most striking new addition to the alpine setting is an intriguing multi-faceted, vertical tower with a glass façade designed by Oslo-based architecture firm Snøhetta. Inside is a series of play zones, with an enormous trampoline and a vertigo-inducing, 14-metre-high climbing net arranged over four floors. Meanwhile, 360-degree windows turn the space into what feels like an air playground, surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Snøhetta was also commissioned to create a new café and restaurant at the entrance to the complex. Their organic, low-slung pod of curvaceous concrete offers views over a contemporary landscaped garden, which features a custom-designed, 1,400-square-metre 'Crystal Cloud' installation by French and Vietnamese artists Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot. The silvery-grey clouds, "floating" above a mirrored pool, were hand-decorated with over 800,000 crystals in three different sizes.

Nearby, a bulging, mossy hillside sporting the unlikely visage of a smiling giant that doubles as a waterfall marks the entrance to Swarovski's newly expanded museum building. Among the five new creative exhibits is a standout new work by British creative duo Fredrikson Stallard. 'Eden' is a multi-sensory forest of simple brass structures and crystal sculptures symbolising exotic wildlife behind a digital waterfall. South Korean artist Lee Bull also plays with notions of modern utopian landscapes with 'Into Lattice Sun', building an elevated bridge that visitors use to traverse the artist's abstract crystalline world of sculptures. Elsewhere, the Studio Job 'Wunderkammer' playfully embraces pastiche, with a fairground-inspired spatial experience that alludes to the chaos of modern society, using a cabinet of curiosities as a starting point.

ADDRESS

Kristallweltenstraße 1
6112 Wattens
Austria

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