2024-10-22
7 分钟Every week we invite one of the jury chairs of the Holcim Foundation Awards – the world’s premier competition for sustainable design – to discuss their views on creating uplifting places, fostering a healthy planet and building thriving communities. In episode three we speak with Norwegian architect and co-founder of Snøhetta, Kjetil Thorsen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to the third in a special series of tall stories brought to you by the Wholesome Foundation Awards, the world's premier competition for sustainable design, highlighting projects that contribute to the transformation of the building sector.
I'm your host, Andrew Tucker.
In each episode, we welcome one of the jury chairs to explore their views on creating uplifting places, fostering a healthy planet, developing viable economics and building thriving communities.
We ask them how their careers began, the pillars of their practice and what their hopes are for the future of the industry.
This week we speak with the Norwegian architect and co founder of Snerhetta Shettel Thorsen.
I was a student with a secondary modern school in England where I had an arts teacher who was very inspiring to me.
And at the time, maybe like many other architects, you had some ambitions of becoming an artist.
Maybe at that age, in the range of early punk period.
But he said, I think you should rather become an architect.
So I did.
And since then, more or less, I've been working towards trying to fulfill my absolute need to make things.
When I started the university in Graz in Austria, I found a certain freedom combined with my Norwegian heritage.
So all of a sudden it became a revelation to me what architecture could actually be in that period.
To me it was very clear that collaboration is the path forward.
The singular architect in the old fashioned seemed overrated, it seemed complex.
And of course my interest in landscape and landscape architecture also promoted me in the direction of trying, especially at the beginning, look at architecture and landscape as one.
And that was the basic idea with the foundation when we founded Sneta, was to bring architecture and landscape architecture closer.
But of course social sustainability was also at the core.
And for many, many years the reason for wanting to do architecture was that it had such a large impact on social settings.
I don't think architecture is there for the sake of architecture.