FEATURE
Yet, for all the countless hours the Snøhetta team spent minutely recording the thousands of ways in which New Yorkers used Times Square, it was important, says Dykers, to preserve an element of serendipity. “Spaces that are more unprescribed in nature allow people to feel ownership over their environment, which in turn cultivates a sense of care for the longevity of the place. The spaces we design serve diverse publics; as such, they rely on the self-discovery of their inhabitants.” The result is, for all intents and purposes, the revival of Times Square as a grand stage upon which all aspects of life in New York, the beautiful and the unruly moments alike, are allowed to play out for the world to witness.
keyless structure serves as a suitable starting point for the annual staff exercise in allesmannsretten, hiking to the company’s namesake mountain that rises 2,286 meters above sea level. Out there in the wind-worn landscape, standing in stark relief to the surrounding black rocky plain, the four peaks of Snøhetta hunch inward toward each other as if in an act of eternal mutual support. There is no truer monument to the architecture firm’s highminded ideals of connection, collaboration and kinship with the boundless Norwegian landscape.
Every year, the company’s 230-odd employees fly from offices in Oslo, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Adelaide, Paris, Stockholm and Innsbruck to gather at Tverrfjellhytta, a viewing pavilion that overlooks the Dovrefjell mountain range in central Norway. With a simple, boxlike exterior of glass and rusted raw steel, and an interior of sculpted wooden logs that ebbs and oozes in a womblike embrace of its users, the Snøhetta-designed
157
