Groundbreaking ceremony for Steven Holl’s Knut Hamsun Center took place on 26 May 2008 in Hamaroy, Norway.

In 1994 Steven Holl Architects was commissioned to design a center for Knut Hamsun, Norway's most inventive twentieth-century writer. The Knut Hamsun Center will be located above the Arctic Circle near the village of Presteid of Hamaroey, close to the farm where the writer grew up. The center is to open on Hamsun’s 150th birthday August 4th 2009.



The ground breaking ceremony takes place on May 26th at 2pm.

Steven Holl will be attending the ceremony. The Chair of County Council in Nordland will lay the foundation stone for the Knut Hamsun Center, and the New York based puppet theatre Wakka Wakka Productions will take the old Knut Hamsun back to his childhood wonderland.



Knut Hamsun fabricated new forms of expression in his first novel Hunger, and founded a truly modern school of fiction with his works Pan, Mysteries. In 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for the novel Growth of the Soil.

The center includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a caf», and an auditorium. The Knut Hamsun Center will tell many contrasting tales and will constantly revitalize Hamsun’s writing.



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 center, “Building as a Body: Battleground of Invisible Forces,” is realized from inside and out. Strange, surprising, and phenomenal experiences in space, perspective, and light provide an inspiring frame for exhibitions. The design won the 1996 Progressive Architecture Award and a model of the building was purchased by Museum of Modern Art.



We are happy to welcome you to attend the groundbreaking ceremony, and also to the grand opening in August 2009. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at the Nordland County Council if you need assistance in organising your trip. More information about the grand opening in 2009 will be sent later.

Knut Hamsun Centre: Building PR from Steven Holl Architects 23/270508



Knut Hamsun Center: PR from Steven Holl Architects 6 Mar 2007


view from the north

Steven Holl Architects reports: Norwegian Council votes to build Knut Hamsun Center


concept sketch exterior

New York City – In 1994 Steven Holl Architects was commissioned to design a center for Knut Hamsun, Norway's most inventive twentieth- century writer. The building mired in years of controversy, but it recently came back alive. It has been approved, the funding is almost complete, and in order to open the building at Hamsun’s 150th birthday in August 2009 the project will break ground in spring 2008.


concept section

The Knut Hamsun Center will be located above the Arctic Circle near the village of Presteid of Hamarøy close to the farm where the writer grew up. The center includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a café, and an auditorium. The Knut Hamsun Center will tell many contrasting tales and will constantly revitalize Hamsun’s writing. Steven Holl hopes to create place of focus for the writer’s work: “The problem today is that there’s so much information, there’s so much thrown at you, that it’s very hard to connect things that have plausible likenesses and tenuous connections. You need a certain solitude and silence and coalescence. It can happen in the authentic place, on the unique site on earth.”


east facade

Knut Hamsun, fabricated new forms of expression in his first novel Hunger, and founded a truly modern school of fiction with his works Pan, Mysteries, and Growth of the Soil. In 1920 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. During World War II, he was naively sympathetic to some of Hitler’s activities, which created a considerable blemish on a long career of creative writing. When commissioned for the Knut Hamsun Center Steven Holl carefully considered all of this and stated: “I think that all those things, good and bad, can be shown in a museum dedicated to the life of one person. You can include that stain in the exhibitions. Life isn’t all clean. It has some messy corners”.


north facade

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. 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. This skin is punctuated by ‘hidden impulses’ as an ‘empty violin case’-balcony with phenomenal sound properties, or a ‘girl with sleeves rolled up polishing yellow panes’-balcony. The rough white-painted concrete interiors are characterized by diagonal rays of light changing throughout the year.


south elevation

These strange, surprising, and phenomenal experiences in space, perspective, and light provide an inspiring frame for exhibitions. The design won the 1996 Progressive Architecture Award and a model of the building was purchased by Museum of Modern Art.


overview panoramic

Steven Holl Architects is currently working on several competition winning projects in Scandinavia. Besides the Knut Hamsun Center the office is working on the Herning Center of the Arts (Herning, Denmark), and Meander (Helsinki, Finland). In 1998 The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki, Finland) opened its door to the
public. This museum, considered as one of Steven Holl Architect’s major works, received the National AIA Design Award in 1999.

Knut Hamsun Centre: Building PR from Steven Holl Architects 060307


west facade

Knut Hamsun Centre - Image credits: Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects



Knut Hamsun Center - Steven Holl Architects

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