Under — the most covered
architecture project
in the world.

The challenge — managing a year of anticipation.

In March 2019, Europe’s first underwater restaurant opened at the southernmost tip of the Norwegian coastline, designed by Snøhetta. More than 700 articles had already been written about Under before it opened — generated by the design release the year prior. That kind of pre-launch attention is a gift and a risk in equal measure. It builds momentum, but it also raises the stakes: the gap between a beautiful render and a finished building had become a public conversation in architecture circles, and audiences had been burned before by projects that looked stunning in CGI and disappointed in reality.

Communicating it — especially to a global press who'd already written the first chapter — required careful strategy and rigorous curatorial instinct.

The risk wasn't the project. The risk was the storytelling. Get it wrong and even something remarkable can underwhelm.

We made a deliberate choice: no polished sunset renders, no glossy clichés. Instead, lean into the rawness of the structure — concrete weathered by the sea, the drama of the Norwegian coastline, the wildness of the marine life outside the window. The building deserved to be seen as it was.

Five photographers. One carefully curated story.

The visual package was the foundation of everything. To capture a project this layered — architecture, interior, landscape, food, marine life — we commissioned five specialist photographers, each bringing a distinct perspective to the same building.

High-end architecture and interior photography. Aerial drone imagery of the structure and coastline. Premium food photography of the Michelin-starred menu. And underwater photography documenting the marine life around the building and through its great window. The result was a press kit that told the full story — not just the building, but the experience, the ecosystem, and the vision behind it.

The curation of that material — what to include, what to hold back, which images led which stories — was as deliberate as the photographs themselves.

The media strategy — everything at once, nothing early.

The leak management alone was a project in its own right. In the months leading up to launch, we maintained strict embargo across all channels — no interviews, no images, no previews. The year of anticipation had done its job; now the opening needed to hit all at once.

On launch day, we brought journalists from the world's top architecture, design, business, and lifestyle publications to the southernmost tip of Norway. They experienced the project in full immersion: heard the architects, the Michelin-starred chef, the biomarine researchers, and the clients tell the story in their own words — then sat down to a world-premiere dinner five metres below the surface of the North Sea.

It was designed as an experience journalists couldn't help but write about — more an event than a traditional press conference.

The result

Under generated 3,200+ media placements in the year following launch — and became the most-covered architecture and hospitality project in the world in 2019. Coverage spanned WSJ Magazine, FT, TIME, The Guardian and thousands more globally. Reservations sold out for six months on opening day.

And several of Snøhetta's new commissions in the years that followed traced directly back to people who first discovered Snøhetta through Under.