Snøhetta’s prize-winning design was characterized by the jury as having strongly identifiable themes that tie the building to its culture and place while also presenting an unusual and unique expression that was in many ways new and innovative. The project developed a highly complex program into a simple general plan that integrated both a practical and intuitive sculptural approach to modeling the exterior form. Its low slung form became a link within the city rather than a divisive sculptural expression. Its accessible roof and broad, open public lobbies make the building a social monument rather than a sculptural one.

The building is as much landscape as architecture and thus fosters public awareness and engagement with the arts. Generous windows at street level provide the public a glimpse of the scenery workshop activities. The building still finds an audience with public who are not opera, ballet or orchestra fans. The cafes and gift shop, with their access to the waterfront are destinations which offer opportunities to generate revenue for the institution while providing a general public amenity. Care was taken with the design of these components so that they are seamlessly integrated into the overall character of the building’s bold design.






Norwegian National Opera and Ballet

The Architect talks about the decision to site the building on the formerly industrial waterfront, the integration of the roof into the landscape, the program and the collaboration with the Norwegian artists to integrate their works into the building.

Built upon the notion that a revival of the ancient library of Alexandria could build a reawakening of culture and knowledge in Mediterranean region, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the result of decades of planning, design
and construction. Due to the international significance of the project and the exceptional scale of the historical context, the project required an approach that allowed for an abstraction of already understood formal languages. The
result is an expression that is at once recognizable and unique. The design relies upon intuitive interpretations of cultural symbols. Programmatic studies identified how the symbolism was modified. The result is a new form of library planning that utilizes a terraced section combined with simple and direct connections between book storage, staff and administration and public spaces.

Planned a decade before the popular appeal of sustainable design, the building is a hallmark in environmental consideration. Over 80% of the materials are locally produced, the interior relies heavily on natural light and fresh air for comfort, and the exterior is planned around thermal massing and building placement to create a comfortable, even temperature inside. The surrounding water pool helps to naturally diminish pollution outside. The building is the first in the region to set a clear building code that accommodates disabled visitors. With 10,000 visitors a day the building remains a successful institution that is both practical and a beacon for redevelopment in the region. Among its many awards, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina won the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture in 2004.

Bibliotheca Alexandria

In 1989 the city of Alexandria held an international architectural competition to design a new library in the spirit of its richest legacy the library destroyed over a thousand years ago.  Snohetta won the competition and went on to construct the building which opened in 2002.  The Architect talks about the new library and it's significance.

The Times Square project is a permanent pedestrian precinct with a goal of making it a destination for visitors, comfortable for daily workers, convenient for theater-goers and an asset to retails. The landscape will create a surface that marks the historic alignment of Broadway, blurs the traditional sidewalk/road boundaries and affords the maximum flexibility of uses.

 The Times Square project is a permanent pedestrian precinct with a goal of making it a destination for visitors, comfortable for daily workers, convenient for theater-goers and an asset to retails. The landscape will create a surface that marks the historic alignment of Broadway, blurs the traditional sidewalk/road boundaries and affords the maximum flexibility of uses. 

Times Square

Jean Parker Phifer, NYC architect and author of Public Art New York, reads a selection on Times Square, at the crossroads of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street.

Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture discusses his work on the transformation of 42nd Street from a seedy area to a family friendly environment.

The Theater District was also known as the Tenderloin, for its long history of prostitution rings, pimps, and porno shops. 

 Claire Fellman, the landscape architect and Project Designer with Snohetta talks about the commission for the Times Square renovation and some of the design goals and challenges in the project. 

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, designed by Snøhetta and scheduled to open in July 2026 in Medora, North Dakota, is conceived as a low‑slung, grass‑covered structure that blends almost seamlessly into the Badlands landscape that shaped Roosevelt’s conservation philosophy. Snøhetta’s design treats the building and terrain as a single continuous form—part museum, part overlook—organized around a looping, walkable roof and a series of indoor–outdoor interpretive spaces. The project is being built to meet the Living Building Challenge, aiming for net‑positive energy and water use, and will house immersive exhibits, a digital research archive, and a reconstruction of Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch cabin. More than a traditional presidential library, it is intended as a civic and environmental destination that links Roosevelt’s legacy of public service and conservation directly to the land that inspired it.

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

The museum houses some of the memorial artifacts of the 9/11 attacks, including a salvaged staircase that was used to escape the fallen towers and the steel beam cross that inspired firefighters. The museum was dedicated on May 15, 2014, with remarks from Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama. Six days later, the museum opened to the public. 300,000 people visit the Snohetta / Davis Brody Bond designed museum in its 1st month

On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the National September 11 Memorial opened in New York. Designed by the architect Michael Arad, the memorial features two 30-foot waterfalls that line the footprint of the Twin Towers and plunge into the earth, invoking a sense of void and absence where the looming towers once stood. The memorial opened to victims' families on September 11, 2011, and to the public the following day.

Snøhetta was commissioned to design the only building that actually sits on the memorial grounds and is slated to contain cultural activities. The idea of placing a cultural building on the actual memorial site is rare and it has been expected to garner considerable scrutiny. During the four years of working with the project, the program has changed several times, however it has remained a cultural facility that is dedicated to visitor comfort and orientation. The design for the building embodies a careful reaction to the horizontal character of the memorial design while also providing the area with a lively organic form that allows the visitor to imagine the site and city in a broader sense. The building will provide each visitor with the opportunity to engage in the act of remembering and to ponder the consequences of forgetting. Certain characteristics of the Museum Paviiion will seem reminiscent of the original towers, while at other times these notions are only alluded to. The alternating reflective treatment of the façade will mirror the changing seasons, revealing the Pavilion’s differing qualities throughout the year. Inside, a large atrium space has been designed to direct light deep into a subterranean museum, designed by a separate architect. Two structural columns rescued from the original towers will stand in the atrium that mark the site with their own profound aesthetic gesture.

&nbsp;in the Foundation Hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum

National September 11 Memorial & Museum

                                            
                                            
                                            
                                                Steven Davis shares his experiences on September 11th and the inspirations behind the design of the Memorial Museum
                                            
                                        

                                            
                                            
                                            
                                                 Craig Dykers talks about his personal experience on the morning of September 11th and the arduous design process behind the 9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City. Guided by a profound sense of empathy, the architect agreed to take the risk of designing the highly symbolic structure. His aim was to "reveal the present moment", the only thing we can be certain of, and connect it to both the past and the future. 
                                            
                                        

 Aaron Dorf, Project Director of Snohetta talks about the Museum and some of the design issues involved in creating it. 

Bærum Kulturhus

Serpentine Gallery

Petter Dass Museett

Bowling Green State University

Snøhetta shares their name with a beautiful, remote, and historically important mountain in central Norway. Their first significant commission was in 1989 for Bibliotheca Alexandrina, reviving the ancient library in Alexandria, Egypt. A transdisciplinary, dialogue-driven practice including architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, art, product design, graphic and digital design, often integrating a combination of interests across our projects.&nbsp;

As the design architect and landscape architect, Snøhetta has repositioned the landmarked 1980s tower originally designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee for a new age while transforming an existing but underutilized Privately-Owned Public Space (POPS) into a lavishly planted, year-round garden. This expansive role includes the conceptual re-thinking of the tower’s structural core for multi-tenant occupancy and the redesign of the tower’s ground level public areas to be more transparent, accessible, and verdant.

The Sandvika Cultural Center forms the focal point of an important cultural axis running through the town centre of Sandvika outside of Oslo. The building connects the old town hall, the bridge across the river, administrative offices, and cinema complex.

Opened in October of 2003, the cultural center is designed around a 600 seat theather hall, equipped with all necessary back stage facilities, two rehearsal rooms and a large public foyer. Because the rehearsal hall has a large window fronting the street, visitors can experience a behind the scenes perspective. 



Based on the principle of a winding ramp, the 2007 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
explores the idea of vertical circulation within a single space. The aim
is to reconsider the traditional, single-level pavilion structure by adding a
third dimension: height. The vertical movement of visitors in the Pavilion complimented the horizontal circulation in the exhibition spaces at the adjacent Serpentine Gallery.
Visitors ascended from the lawn to the roof via the ramp, which
functioned as a mediator between the Pavilion interior and its surroundings.
The space was defined by a geometric pattern that  both articulated the
wall surface and the places in which one could sit. The movement and interaction
of the visitors was a defining component of the Pavilion.

The Tubaloon is a unique pneumatic tension membrane structure designed to serve as the main stage at Scandinavia’s reputable Kongsberg Jazz Festival.
The musical event is one of the oldest and most highly regarded festivals of its kind in Europe and highlights cutting-edge acts from the international jazz world. Mounting, dismounting and storage of the structure have been optimized to allow for its annual festival appearance at this historic hilltop site.

The structure is a hybrid, featuring a continuous 1m diameter pneumatic perimeter tube that rests against a thin galvanised steel frame and provides even distribution of tension to the large hour-glass-shaped central membrane.  White Ferrari PVDF coated PVC fabric was chosen for its durability and responsiveness to effects from lighting. The hybrid structure results in a form that is more voluminous and shapely than pure membrane structures and it gives the impression that the Tubaloon is an organism rather than just skin.  It is only up for two weeks every year.  

When Lillehammer was chosen as the host city for the 1994 Winter Olympics, the inhabitants of this small town and the national government quickly began to redefine the conditions that ordinarily control how a large sporting event is planned. A considerable emphasis was placed upon the future ramificationsthat such a large and spectacular event would produce for the future of their town and the nation at large.To overcome this dilemma and to secure the long-term, sustainable impact of such large investments, the Norwegian Olympic Committee decided to follow a two-fold strategy. Firstly, the new buildings were designed to be flexible enough to convert into or adopt other functions after the Olympics were complete. Secondly, existing cultural institutions such as the Maihaugen Cultural Museum and the Art Collection of Lillehammer should be enhanced and developed into stronger and more contemporary institutions for the long-term benefit of the region and its population. 

The art collection of Lillehammer was already well established and its collection consisted of local, national, and international artists. The main focus of the standing collection was dedicated to mid-to-late-twentieth century Romantic landscape artists that had long been dedicated to the exceptional natural beauty that Lillehammer affords. The intention then was to expand the activities and exhibition spaces allowing for a more contemporary museum that could house additional temporary activities and exhibitions in addition to enhancing opportunities for its standing, historical collections.


Petter Dass was a noted 18th Century Minister who rose to national prominence and became the foremost agent of change in the Reformist religious movements in Norway. The new cultural center that is located in a very remote coastal region in Northern Norway was designed to allow visitors to connect to the exceptional life of this historical figure while also not limiting the experience to a purely educational or immersive learning experience about a single individual’s life.

One important challenge of the site is its close proximity to the church that Petter Dass ministered from. The design boldly anticipates this challenge by placing the building directly into an adjacent granite ridge that separates the church from the nearby fjord. After removing granite blocks from the ridge, the building was nestled into the remaining gorge with one end projecting into the air to provide a form that at once replaces the landscape and opens it to visual connections between the fjord and the churchyard. The granite that was removed was used elsewhere on infrastructure projects in the area.

The importance of the link between the fjord and the churchyard is also significant in that it draws forward in a direct way the influence of the sea on Petter Dass’ life. The resulting design has helped to introduce this interesting story to a contemporary audience and the facility has attracted young visitors from the region who often can only find new cultural life in the bigger cities further away from the region. The center is both lively and meditative and has been well-received by the residents of the area despite its seemingly unusual form and placement. The building was recently nominated for the Mies Van der Rohe Award.

Snøhetta’s expansion to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reimagines SFMOMA as a new art experience and gateway into the city of San Francisco. No longer an inward looking shrine to the art object, the new SFMOMA realizes in built form the museum’s goals of being a welcoming center for arts education and an important public space for the Bay area. The new expansion runs contiguously along the back of the existing Mario Botta-designed building which opened in 1995, allowing for a seamless integration of the two structures.

By nearly tripling the amount of exhibition space and expanding the unticketed gallery areas and outdoor public spaces, the museum will be more accessible than ever when it re-opens on May 14, 2016. The expansion will also enliven the surrounding cityscape by opening up new routes of public circulation throughout the South of Market neighborhood and into the museum.

Leave the gun," Richard Castellano, as Peter Clemenza, the loval Corleone capo, orders his henchman after rubbing out a turncoat in a parked car in the 1972 film The Godfather. Then the Bronx-born Castellano memorably ad-libs: “Take the cannoli.”You don't have to be a Mob capo to savor a fresh cannoli or, for that matter, to deserve your just desserts. No subject engaged Times readers who contributed to our original objects list more than food did. They weighed in passionately for pizza, egg creams, Mello-Rolls, Ebinger's blackout cake, and more.We couldn't include them all--this isn't a cookbook--so we exercised literary license and chose my favorite, which many New Yorkers embraced, too: the black-and-white cookie. It barely qualifies as a cookie; it's more like a cake. It's not even black (the icing is chocolate brown). Somehow, though, it democratically says New York (from subway bakeries to shrink-wrapped varieties in bodegas and delis, to William Greenberg Desserts and Eleven Madison Park, where the tasting menu is $195 per person, cookie included).Who baked the first black-and-white? The cookie's provenance is sketchy. Some experts trace it to Hemstrought's Bakery in upstate Utica, New York, about a century ago, but those often had a fluffier chocolate base and fudge frosting, although vanilla versions were sold, too. In some locales (upstate New York and New England) they are called half-moons or harlequins, though black-and-whites are generally bigger and topped with a fondant frosting. Germany boasts a version known generically as Amerikaner.&nbsp;During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama visited a delicatessen in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he dubbed them Unity Cookies. The black-and-white also was invoked in a Seinfeld episode as a metaphor for racial harmony and peace between the sexes, specifically George and Elaine ("Look to the cookie!" Jerry declares in a crowded bakery). Jerry Seinfeld notwithstanding, no real New Yorker eats a black-and-white cookie down the middle. You reveal a lot about yourself depending on whether you save the chocolate or the vanilla half for last."Unlike other edible icons, like New York cheesecake or bagels, there is no such thing as a delicious black-and-white cookie--they are either edible or inedible," Molly O'Neill wrote in The New York Times. "They are the runes of deli counters and bakeries. Why? Because they are not what they appear to be. Black-and-white cookies are not even cookies. They are floury cakes baked in a cookie style. They are broken promises. They are irony with kitsch. Seinfeld was right. If you look to the cookie, you get New York.TEXT FROM SAM ROBERTS 101 OBJECTS

550 Madison Avenue Garden

AIANY

Snøhetta

Sandra Bloodworth, director of Arts for Transit, discusses the work Times Square: 35 Times, by Toby Buonagurio, located in the Times Square Station, 42nd Street.

Michael Arad talks about "Reflecting Absence", the memorial at the 9/11 Memorial. 

Tubaloon was designed as a temporary pavilion for the annual 2 week jazz festival at Konzberg.  The architect talks about the design of the fabric structure, its acoustics and how it is dissembled and then reassembled annually.

The Architect describes the design of the Art Museum and shares some of the features of the building.

Snøhetta

SITES

PLAYLISTS CURATED by Snøhetta