Snøhetta has made explicit commitments to a deep carbon target. Each project the firm designs must perform at the highest levels. This ambition translates to energy-positive goals and reliance on renewable technologies such as solar.

To be carbon-neutral, however, a project’s operational carbon emissions — say, energy in use — must offset its embodied carbon — say, materials, assembly, demolition — over its lifetime. This is a complex computation that relies on performance and auditing.

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen is a co-founding partner of the architecture, landscape, interiors and brand design office Snøhetta and leads their work in Oslo, Norway.
© Snøhetta

To attain this deep target and still produce good architecture, Kjetil and his teams seek paradigm-shifting forms and typologies. Snøhetta pushes integration of the design process a notch higher with the concept of “transpositioning.”

In this approach, stakeholders are asked to break away from their roles to wear the other’s hat. This exercise forces the team to step out of its comfort zone at the very start of the project and to defy orthodox thinking.

By implementing a collection of subtle yet powerful measures, like the elimination of curbs, removal of site clutter and introduction of sculpted granite benches, Snøhetta has dramatically transformed the pedestrian experience within Times Square.
© Michael Grimm / Snøhetta

The result of transpositioning is that it sometimes difficult in a Snøhetta building to know where, for instance, architecture ends and urbanism begins. Case in point, the Opera House in Oslo breaks free of the conventional typology of cultural buildings as standalone structures. It does this by blurring the boundaries between public space, landscape and built form.

The large roofscape above the Opera House serves as a social space where visitors can enjoy the skyline or peek into the building. It positions the visitor at the interface of scales, simultaneously on the building and in the city.

The Oslo Opera House, designed by Snøhetta, is part of the capital’s revitalisation strategy to redevelop its historically industrial waterfront into an active public space.
© Helge Skodvin / Snøhetta

Like the roof plaza, the lobby of the Oslo Opera House is keyless and the visitors have been free to roam its spaces at all hours since the building opened in 2008.
© Erik Berg / Snøhetta

Snøhetta is a torchbearer for carbon-neutral thinking. Its proposal for Powerhouse Telemark in Porsgrunn sets a benchmark for office buildings in Norway.

The annual net energy consumption of Telemark is 70% less than other newly constructed offices. Using the photovoltaics on its roof, it generates more energy than it will use in its lifetime.

As part of the Powerhouse series, Powerhouse Telemark sets a new standard by reducing its yearly net energy consumption by 70% compared to similar new-construction offices.
© Ivar Kvaal / Snøhetta

The building’s striking 24° tilted roof gently slopes to surpass the extremities of the building’s volume, expanding the roof’s surface and ensuring a maximum amount of solar energy can be harvested both from the photovoltaic canopy and the building’s PV-cell clad south-facing facade.
© Ivar Kvaal / Snøhetta

A performative approach, says Kjetil, may lead to unconventional aesthetics. And these out-of-the-box buildings sometimes face criticism for the way they look.

Here, he argues that an unpacking of ‘beauty’ is important; its definition changes over time. If we can avoid pigeonholing to styles and isms of architecture, we begin to see that a building is beautiful because it has a purposeful relationship with the world around it, natural or man-made.

Snøhetta is on the frontlines of sustainability because it seeks the integration of performance and beauty, and in the process, alters expectations of both. The firm’s work underscores the difference between invention – the tweaking of solutions that exist – and innovation – new ideas of what the future might become.