From a presidential library emerging from the North Dakota Badlands to an immersive installation in Milan, and from new interventions within New York’s architectural fabric to the transformation of significant existing buildings, Snøhetta continues to demonstrate meaningful and place-specific design, framed by environmental and cultural sensitivity, through the impactful work of their transdisciplinary practice.
This summer marked the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL) in Medora, North Dakota. Guided by the idea that the Library is the Landscape, the project brings architecture, landscape, and interiors together as one continuous experience. Rising from a butte beneath 121,000 square feet of living prairie, the Library invites visitors to move through, over, and into the landscape that shaped Roosevelt’s conservation legacy. Across its 93-acre site, restored native prairie, local materials, and ambitious environmental strategies make stewardship something visitors can actively experience.
Earlier this year, the firm’s work took a different form at Milan Design Week. Created with USM and artist and experience designer Annabelle Schneider, Renaissance of the Real responded to an increasingly digital world with an invitation to reconnect with the physical one. Through touch, sound, vision, and material, the multisensory installation explored the value of presence, perception, and slowness.
In New York, 113 Spring Street continues the exploration of how existing architecture can be given new relevance while remaining connected to the character and history of its surroundings. That dialogue between what exists and what comes next also informs Snøhetta’s work at the Ford Motor Company Research & Engineering Center, where transformation becomes an act of careful observation, preserving what matters while creating new possibilities for how a space can be used and experienced.
The Glasshouse Theatre at Queensland Performing Arts Centre also opened this year, creating a new space for performance and gathering within Brisbane’s cultural precinct and strengthening connections between architecture, public space, and the performing arts. Looking ahead, the Shanghai Grand Opera House is set to open in October, bringing architecture and landscape together through a new cultural landmark on the Huangpu River.
