Snøhetta — Under

Snøhetta  ·  2018 – 2021

Building a Scandinavian design icon at Snøhetta.

My Role
Global PR & Communications Lead
Scope
Launch strategy · Press relations · Brand storytelling
Team
Small in-house comms team, across 8 global studios
Result
75+ projects shipped in 3.5 years · Sustained top-10 global ranking

Every other week: a new high-stakes launch, a new global media moment. The real challenge wasn't keeping up the pace — it was making sure each one still told Snøhetta's larger story.

A cultural institution with a global footprint

When I joined in 2018, Snøhetta was already a world-leading institution, rooted in Scandinavian design principles — minimalism, materiality, and a deep sense of place — with a portfolio spanning the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the project that gave the studio its international breakthrough in 1989), the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the redevelopment of Times Square, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and hundreds of other landmark projects across the globe.

At any given time, Snøhetta had around 400 projects on the drawing board and 40 under construction — spanning architecture, interiors, landscape, product design, visual identity and public space across eight global studios.

As Global PR & Communications Lead at Snøhetta, I led the launch pipeline and communications work across all our global studios — with more than 75 projects shipped in three and a half years, each one its own high-stakes cultural moment.

Shipping at pace, without losing the bar

Each launch came with its own pace, stakeholders and ambitions; the real challenge was making sure that, together, they told one coherent story of what Snøhetta stands for.

I worked end-to-end from brief to release — shaping strategy with design teams and clients, commissioning and art-directing photographers, writing copy, and leading execution across project launches, exhibitions, books and monographs, events, lectures, client advisory and press relations with journalists worldwide.

With a small team and modest budgets, the work generated ~10,000 annual media mentions, grew our social following to 780K, and earned recurring coverage in publications spanning the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, TIME, The Guardian, Fast Company, Forbes, Wallpaper, Monocle, Dezeen and more — and consistently placed Snøhetta as one of the top ten architecture firms in the world, year after year.

Just as importantly, that visibility was a strategic lever, not just a measure of reach and credibility: several new client relationships and commissions in the years that followed could be traced directly back to people who first encountered Snøhetta through our PR and communications efforts.

Ingrid Sårheim Forssell with Marius Næss and Kristoffer Klakegg outside Snøhetta's Oslo studio
Back at Snøhetta for a meeting in 2026, with Managing Director of Snøhetta Oslo, Marius Næss, and my reMarkable colleague, Kristoffer Klakegg.

What stayed with me.

Snøhetta's foundational philosophy — "contextual conceptualism", its radical open-mindedness, and a fearless instinct for pushing boundaries — taught me one of the most important lessons of my career: that rigour and fearlessness aren't opposites, and that the best outcomes often live just beyond the edge of what feels achievable.

A selection of some of the projects I worked on follows below.

75+
Projects launched
~10,000
Annual media mentions
780K
Social followers
8
Global studios

Selected Projects

Norwegian Banknotes
Norway's New Banknotes View →
Le Monde HQ
Le Monde Group Headquarters, Paris View Project →
Outdoor Care Retreat
The Outdoor Care Retreat View →
Edvard Munch Exhibition
Edvard Munch Exhibition, Ithra View →
The Best Weapon — UN HQ
The Best Weapon, UN Headquarters View Project →
Moniker
Moniker — Oslo's New House of Fashion View →
Holzweiler
Holzweiler Showroom, Lysaker Brygge View →
Aesop Pitt Street
Aesop Pitt Street, Sydney View →
Swarovski Manufaktur
Swarovski Manufaktur View Project →
Le Monde Wayfinding
Le Monde Group HQ — Wayfinding & Signage View →
S-1500 Chair
S-1500 — A Chair from Recycled Plastic View →
Fuglemyrhytta
Fuglemyrhytta — A panoramic self-service cabin View →
Barr Cutlery
Barr Cutlery for Table Noir View →
Geopolymer Concrete
Geopolymer Concrete — the Construction Material of the Future View →
Terra – Georg Jensen
Terra — A World of Plants for Georg Jensen View →
Wikipedia Visual Identity
New Visual Identity for the Wikipedia Movement View →
Collective Intuition
Snøhetta: Collective Intuition — Monograph with Phaidon Press View →
Casework for Erik Jørgensen
Casework Collection for Erik Jørgensen View →
Powerhouse Brattørkaia
Powerhouse Brattørkaia — The world's northernmost energy-positive building View Project →
reMarkable Pop-up
reMarkable — A Better Place to Think View →
Tungestølen Tourist Cabin
Tungestølen Tourist Cabin — A generous shelter View Project →
Shanghai Grand Opera House
Shanghai Grand Opera House View →
King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture
King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture (Ithra) View Project →
Under
Under — Europe's First Underwater Restaurant Full Case Study →