Knut Hamsun Centre Norway, Norwegian Architecture, Photos, Project, News

Arctic Circle Building : Project by Steven Holl Architects

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Knut Hamsun Center : Architecture Information + Images  

Knut Hamsun Center in Hamarøy, Norway Designed by Steven Holl Architects

Opened August 2009



Knut Hamsun Center
Hamarøy, Norway
1994 - 2009

Completed building photos by Steven Holl, received 11 Aug 2009:


photos © Steven Holl Architects

Knut Hamsun, Norway's most inventive twentieth-century writer, fabricated new forms of expression in his first novel Hunger. He went on to found a truly modern school of fiction with his works Pan, Mysteries, and Growth of the Soil. This center dedicated to Hamsun is located above the Arctic Circle near the village of Presteid of Hamarøy near the farm where the writer grew up.


photos © Steven Holl Architects

The 2700-square-meter center includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a café, and an auditorium equipped with the latest film projection equipment. (Hamsun's writings have been particularly inspiring to filmmakers, which is evident in the more than 17 films based on his work.) The building is conceived as an archetypal and intensified compression of spirit in space and light, concretizing a Hamsun character in architectonic terms. The concept for the museum, “Building as a Body: Battleground of Invisible Forces,” is realized from inside and out. Here the wood exterior is punctuated by hidden impulses piercing through the surface: An "empty violin case" balcony has phenomenal sound properties, while a viewing balcony is like the "girl with sleeves rolled up polishing yellow panes."


photos © Steven Holl Architects

Many other aspects of the building use the vernacular style as inspiration for reinterpretation. The stained black wood exterior skin is characteristic of the great wooden stave Norse churches. On the roof garden, long grass refers to traditional Norwegian sod roofs in a modern way. The rough white-painted concrete interiors are characterized by diagonal rays of light calculated to ricochet through the section on certain days of the year. These strange, surprising, and phenomenal experiences in space, perspective, and light provide an inspiring frame for exhibitions.


photos © Steven Holl Architects

Knut Hamsun Centre building images / information from Steven Holl Architects 110809




photographs © Ernst Furuhatt - Salten Museum

Knut Hamsun Center : background information on the building



Knut Hamsun Center design - Steven Holl Architects

Another project by Steven Holl that uses indirect coloured light:

Chapel of St Ignatius, Seattle, Washington, USA
1997
Chapel of St Ignatius
photo courtesy Marialaura Polignano



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Knut Hamsun Centre Norway Building - page: adrian welch / isabelle lomholt
 













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