On the 28th of September, ‘Lunch with an Architect’ has the pleasure of hosting Snøhetta, a Norwegian agency based in Oslo and New York.

Snøhetta has 180 employees of 30 different nationalities and develops projects in Europe, Asia and the United States. Some of its latest creations can be found in San Francisco (SF MOMA), Paris (new headquarters of Le Monde) and New York (September 11 Memorial).

Set up from the outset as an integrated firm of landscapers, architects and interior designers, the firm’s projects are characterised by this deliberately interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach.

Snøhetta’s hallmark is the osmosis that it naturally creates between landscape and architecture. Snøhetta integrates these two elements into a single process of creation and designs each project as a fragment of territory, with its own geography, climate and society, rather than as an object:

"Minimalist and hyper-contextual, Snøhetta’s architecture always seeks to take a back seat to the site itself, to bring out the readability and coherence of its environment".

Snøhetta cultivates an architecture that is sensitive, meaningful, almost metaphysical, integrating the most intangible and fluctuating elements of reality: the passage of time, the weather, light, seasons, movement.

Flagey, F()rum