It’s Alive: Holl’s Knut Hamsun Center Back on Track

New York City’s Steven Holl Architects was commissioned back in 1994 to design a center for Knut Hamsun, Norway's most inventive 20th-century writer. The building, mired in years of controversy, recently came back to life as approvals have been granted, and funding is almost complete. Located above the Arctic Circle near Presteid of Hamarose, where the writer grew up, the center includes exhibition areas, library and reading room, café, and auditorium. On the green roof, a garden with long grass refers to traditional Norwegian sod roofs in a modern way, and the tarred black wood facade is characteristic of the great wooden stave Norse churches. The rough white-painted concrete interiors are characterized by diagonal rays of light changing throughout the year. The design won the 1996 Progressive Architecture Award and a model of the building was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. To open the building on Hamsun’s 150th birthday in August 2009, the project will break ground in Spring 2008. (Sketch courtesy of Steven Holl Architects.)