by: Lisa Delgado
Event: Current Work: Snøhetta
Location: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 10.28.08
Speakers: Craig Dykers, AIA — Senior Partner/Director, Snøhetta; Calvin Tsao, FAIA — President, Architectural League & Partner, Tsao & McKown Architects (introduction)
Organizer: The Architectural League of New York
Snøhetta’s entry pavilion for the September 11 Memorial Hall and Memorial Museum.
Rendering by Squared Design Lab
Snøhetta is named for a craggy Norwegian mountain, but the firm’s inspiration comes as easily from water. From its Oslo office windows, ships can be seen drifting by on a fjord, said Senior Partner/Director Craig Dykers, AIA. “Three or four hundred tons of metal float effortlessly by, and there’s nothing more engaging to an architect [than] to see that much weight seemingly untouched by gravity. In a sense, that’s an important part of, I think, how we approach things — with a lightness,” he remarked.
The design for an airy glass-and-steel pavilion at the WTC tilts up toward the sky. Serving as an entry to the September 11 Memorial Hall and Memorial Museum, the pavilion has an angled roof that points down toward the underground museum and leads the eye up toward nearby buildings, reinforcing its role as a “link between the memorial and the commercial fabric of the city,” Dykers said.
The much-delayed project has, at times, been a tumultuous one. “Our building has been the only building on the memorial site, and therefore it gathers more criticism than the much larger buildings nearby,” he said. At one point, they had to redesign it and scale it down, yet in the end, Dykers thinks the change has been a good one. “In NYC, a small scale is a luxury,” he observed; the reduced size will bring a greater sense of intimacy for visitors.
The project led the firm to establish a second office in NYC in 2004, boosting its local presence. These days, it is planning to renovate a Williamsburg space for STREB, a highly athletic dance company whose gravity-defying feats match the firm’s kinetic sensibilities. “We began to review the methods of movement that occur with their dance company and integrate that into the motions of the façade,” Dykers said. Ripples in the brick will let dancers climb on the façade’s surface to perform acrobatic feats, and entire sections of the façade will be able to pivot open to the street.
Beyond presenting an array of projects, Dykers also discussed Snøhetta’s philosophies and progressive work policies, such as keeping an internal union. Principals are paid no more than twice an entry-level salary, and the firm’s experience-based salary ladder is common knowledge, taking the mystery out of the compensation process. And even in busy times, they eschew late nights at the office, proving that architects can take their work seriously without letting it weigh them down.
Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for Oculus, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.