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. Its 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: a practice of "contextual conceptualism", radical open-mindedness, and a fearless instinct for pushing boundaries.
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. Our efforts 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.
What stayed with me.
Snøhetta operates at a level of ambition that's hard to describe until you've been inside it. Projects that should be impossible get built. Standards that should be impractical become the baseline. Living inside that changes how you think.
A selection of some of the projects I worked on follows below.
