Archinect - News

Snøhetta's Blanton New Grounds redesign opens at the University of Texas at Austin

2023-05-25T12:20:00-04:00

A recently completed project from three alumni Snøhetta staffers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art has delivered an artistic intervention they say stands as a new gateway between the 51,000-student campus and its host city.

Principal and co-founder Craig Dykers, Managing Director Elaine Molinar, and Director John Newman, each School of Architecture graduates from the late-1980s, collaborated to enact a new canopy-like intervention that’s meant as a centerpiece to the museum’s $35 million Blanton New Grounds initiative.

Photo: Sloan Breeden Photography

Their solution involved a series of 40-by-30-foot metallic shade structures formed in the shape of flower petals to create a canopy of the new landscaped garden entrance to the museum while also framing Ellsworth Kelly’s 2018 monumental stone Austin chapel on the Blanton’s Moody Patio.

Photo: Sloan Breeden Photography

The petals double as a rainwat...

Snøhetta unveils green design for new Westchester Square Library in the Bronx

2022-12-19T16:24:00-05:00

Snøhetta has recently unveiled designs for a new 12,000-square-foot library project in the Bronx’s Westchester Square it says will expand on the diverse neighborhood’s lineage as a “place where knowledge is acquired and shared for generations to come.”

The new building for the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch is sited next to the historic 131-year-old Huntington Free Library, will come wrapped in a pastoral print fritted glass facade in reference to the Bronx’s status as NYC’s greenest borough and target a LEED Platinum certification through an environmental strategy that includes an array of solar panels, rainwater recycling, a high-performance envelope, and slate of energy conservation measures.

Its two-story interior is organized around a need for natural light in educational spaces and the desire to frame a street-level exterior Viewing Garden that serves as a “counterpoint to the surrounding urban landscape” while adding “visual interest to the indoor experience.”

Image co...

Craig Dykers on Snøhetta's innovation lessons

2016-12-05T17:31:00-05:00

I’ve been privileged to interview Craig Dykers, founding partner in the extraordinary global architecture firm Snøhetta, on several occasions and walked away each time incredibly inspired by the breadth and depth of their creativity and innovation approaches. [...] Analyzing their innovation process can yield important lessons for companies. Here are some highlights.

The Forbes list of Snøhetta innovation lessons and glimpses into the firm's intercontinental problem-solving process includes flat hierarchies, embrace of contrasts across a variety of sectors, an internal podcast, and celebration of good news, among many others.

Other Snøhetta stories on Archinect:

The Mountaineers: Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar of Snøhetta on One-to-One #27

2016-06-13T17:47:00-04:00

Elaine Molinar joined founding partner Craig Dykers at Snøhetta's very beginning, when they won their first competition for the Alexandria Library in 1989. Since then, the firm has grown true to its mountainous namesake, expanding to four offices worldwide and winning pivotal cultural projects in architecture and design, among them the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, SFMOMA's expansion, the entrance pavilion at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and Norway's new banknotes.

They both joined me on One-to-One to talk about their future hopes for the firm, Snøhetta's office culture, and their advice for working with your significant other (they've been a couple since the firm began).

Listen to One-to-One #27 with Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar of Snøhetta:

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The NY Times talks with Craig Dykers of Snøhetta

2014-10-23T13:00:00-04:00

There is a Norwegian word “hildring,” about the boundary between horizon and sky. The colors and variations of the bills were inspired by the interesting things that happen when sky meets sea. When you place all the bills side by side, they also create an interesting pattern, like a mosaic. In our work, we often try to take reality by surprise.

Shedding its Fusty Architectural Past, Philly Welcomes Nordic Starchitect Snøhetta

2013-03-28T19:40:00-04:00

The latest evidence of Philadelphia’s architectural comeback? The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta is coming to town for a project at Temple University. “We have a fantastic tradition of quality architeture and urbanism in Philadelphia, but we do go through low ebbs in that tradition,” says Harris Steinberg, the executive director of PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.

The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta has designed some of the most notable buildings and public spaces in the world over the last 15 years. The new Oslo Opera House. Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina. A reconfigured Times Square in New York, and a massive expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Next up? Temple University’s library, on a still-gritty stretch of Broad Street between Montgomery and Norris in North Philadelphia. Snøhetta director and co-founder Craig Dykers is delivering a lecture on campus next week, sharing some of his firm’s work with Temple students and a general audience of designers, architects and urbanists.

Dykers might shed some light on Snøhetta’s early stage thinking for the library project, but design work has not yet begun, so don’t expect any renderings.

Even so, Dykers is likely to address a full house. The Oslo-based firm, which was featured in a glowing 5,400-word New Yorker profile in January, is very much in vogue. Plenty of its...

SNØHETTA establishes endowed scholarship for undergraduates at UTSOA

2012-05-09T14:01:00-04:00

"Scholarship allows for creativity in the midst of judgment and therefore we hope to honor the thrill of seeking with this gift." say Dykers and Molinar. "Willingness to expand the traditional definitions of architecture in order to pursue the tangential, with the goal of influencing one's architectural studies and future careers should be rewarded. With this scholarship, we honor the heritage of independent thinking at the UT Austin School of Architecture that so greatly influenced us."

The Snøhetta Endowed Scholarship in Architecture, established by Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar, will make its first award to a student recipient in fall 2012.