Architecture as a Cultural Catalyst: Snøhetta’s Kjetil Trædal Thorsen on Designing for Change

• Snøhetta co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen advocates for transdisciplinary design, breaking professional silos to address complex global and environmental challenges.
• Inspired by Norway’s “right to roam,” Snøhetta creates democratic, culture-driven spaces that prioritise public accessibility and foster human connection.
• Architecture acts as a facilitator, not a protagonist, catalysing social equity and providing the cultural framework necessary for sustainability.

 

---

 

By Daniel Vlahek

 

From the first tools created by Homo Habilis 2.5 million years ago to the sprawling code that underpins our modern AI models, design is what makes us uniquely human.

And design has always been at the forefront of how humans interact with one another and with the world around us.

Whilst design has grown exponentially in its professions, tools and processes since the time of our forebearers, its field faces substantive challenges today from increasingly ambiguous boundaries. From artifacts, structures and processes to large-scale social, economic and environmental problems.

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, architect and co-founder of Snøhetta, recently spoke at the University of Melbourne for the first time, eloquently providing a snapshot of design practice history, its ethos for architecture and collaboration, and its argument for how design can be a positive force for cultural change amid mounting challenges.

When the United Nations released its Brundtland Report in 1987, it aimed to establish a framework to address growing concerns for environmental degradation and global inequity.

In Oslo, Norway, a group of architects of both the built and landscape form caught wind of ‘Our Common Future’ and, in Kjetil’s own words, “We believed it was possible to translate this political document, from the UN, into how we shape our future, physical surroundings”.

Now, Snøhetta stands as a global, transdisciplinary practice that integrates architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, art, and product design, with seven studios across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australia.

This transdisciplinary practice is evident in the ethos and principles that underpin its design practice.

By letting go of silos, which we as humans have prioritised as a result of structure and process, Snøhetta engages in a ‘collective identity’ approach; bringing together diverse groups of people working holistically and horizontally as much as possible, so that new futures can be envisioned through a continuous flow of unique dialogue and perspectives.

“People are the ones, I think, keep us going…they tell us how to live our life”, said Kjetil as he reflected on his team’s annual hiking trip to a historic Norwegian mountain that shares the company’s name.

Indeed, creating connections with people permeates Snøhetta’s work. How the studio engages its own staff is a mirror image of its work and dialogue in whichever community it finds itself in.

The studio also takes inspiration from the laws of its birthplace.

In Norway, its citizens have the ‘right to roam’, known as Allemannsretten, which grants everyone the freedom to traverse land regardless of ownership, provided they are respectful to the people and land.

These principles have manifested in the creation of spaces that are context- and culture-driven, encourage democratic access, and foster a strong relationship with their natural landscape.

One of the studio’s standout projects, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, is a symbol of what happens when you design spaces that capture the zeitgeist of its surroundings.

Kjetil reflects on one of the criticisms his team faced during its early development in 1989: “Why would you build a library in a city where 50% of the population is illiterate?” he asks.

“That’s why…that’s why you need a library,” Kjetil answers.

The Bibliotheca is just one of the many projects that showcase Snøhetta’s approach not just to designing spaces, but to allow culture to flourish.

“Everything we plan, everything we design, we design for unknown futures. Everything we plan…only has options of possibilities, not solutions,” he says.

This was particularly prominent in the studio’s reenvisioning of Times Square; a once congested landscape transformed into an open-ended civic platform for emergent public life.

Scale does not matter to Snøhetta either, as evidenced by their smaller-scale projects, from building secluded wooden shelters for hospital patients to constructing beehives across Norway.

“What matters is your attitude, what matters is the program and the content of what you are trying to produce.”

Across all these unique projects, big or small, lies a gentle provocation: a world view that architecture is the facilitator, not the protagonist, in building a cultural interface that helps humans reconnect with the systems – environmental, social, intellectual – that sustain them.