Teamwork behind 9/11 pavilion

Craig Dykers' architectural career is seemingly full of contradiction.

On one hand, he's a superstar in his field. He's working on one of the biggest projects in America, the design for the pavilion at the National September 11 Memorial Museum and Pavilion in New York City.

On the other hand, Dykers and his firm, the Norwegian-based Snøhetta, embrace a philosophy that completely rejects the concept of a star system. Snøhetta — named for the mountain the Vikings equated with heaven — is all about teamwork.

Dykers will be in town this week to open Design Alliance Omaha's 2009-10 lecture series at the Joslyn Art Museum. We asked him about the project at Ground Zero and about his firm's unusual design philosophy.

How did Snøhetta get involved in the pavilion project?

In 2004, an international call was sent out to architects asking for qualifications and interest in assisting with the design. At first, we were uncomfortable presenting ourselves for this work. We felt that this task was best left to local New Yorkers who would have the best perspective on what to do there. But the selection committee felt we offered the best opportunity to create a design that brought people together. Our work is about social connectivity as much as it is a response to site and program. Snøhetta is a collaborative office that thrives on discussion and debate. This connected with the selection committee, since it is very unusual in the world of architectural design.

What's the design concept behind the pavilion?

The pavilion addresses many complicated issues. It serves as an addition to the memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives there, but it also looks to the future. A slightly reflective façade allows your own image to be projected onto the building, connecting you directly to the architecture. The actual form of the building is dynamic and raises up from the ground, leading the eye toward the center of the memorial park and also upward to the surrounding skyscrapers. It is both lively and straightforward, helping people to orient themselves as well as providing a prominent icon for the visitor.

You mentioned that Snøhetta is a collaborative office. It's been said you can't create a great design by committee. What inspired you to reject the received wisdom?

Large numbers of people use buildings, so it seems reasonable to expect that large numbers of people must have insight into what can make a building perform better. Unlike a work of fine art, the visitor has no choice but to engage with a building. In the arts, there is always an opportunity to ignore a trend. This is less possible with the built environment. It is not that we allow our sketches to be literally made by committee. It is more about developing an inclusive, consensus-driven environment where workshops point to useful and necessary directions around which we can form a design. We allow the motivations to grow from within, and our job is to provide a strong conceptual core that everyone can rally around.

Snøhetta's designs seem to complement their surrounding landscapes. For example, the New Opera House (2008) in Oslo grows organically out of the harbor. Could you explain this design philosophy?

As urban dwellers, human beings have been overwhelmed by technological advances, making the understanding of place and the natural conditions of place more difficult. We believe that buildings can offer a link between the world that is around us and the world we desire to live within. Although many people feel an affinity for nature, there is also a great fear of nature. Cyclical natural disasters and the overwhelming influence of the climate provide this underlying fear. We hope our buildings can allow us to confront both our fears and our love of nature in a direct way.

What's been your most challenging design/project?

We like to say that our most difficult project was creating Snøhetta. Maintaining a firm, allowing for a creative and socially stimulating environment in our studio takes a good deal of work. We try to manage our offices in Oslo and New York in a Nordic manner, keeping work hours to a minimum while emphasizing a healthy social life and an open and transparent dialogue. This is very hard to accomplish in the United States, since there is less emphasis on social values in the workplace, but we continue to strive toward this goal. Our staff is internally unionized and negotiate salaries openly through their nominated representatives.

What's been your most unusual design/project — I heard Snøhetta once redesigned a tiny garden in a working-class district of Oslo for the convenience and pleasure of the owner's pet cat?

Every project is unusual in some manner because, thankfully, people are very unusual, and each project brings with it a different set of authors. For me, the most unusual project was designing a set of twin libraries north of the Arctic Circle for a group of indigenous Europeans called the Sami — in English they are called Laplanders. These people are somewhat similar to the Native Americans but are European-based — they herd reindeer and are somewhat nomadic. The libraries were meant to be a living link to their society. Unfortunately, the project could not be built, but it stays with me still.

You studied a variety of things — art, medicine among others. What ultimately inspired you to pursue architecture?

I have always been interested in the human body. I even had an interest in fashion design when I was younger. Clothing, medicine and much of artistic studies all revolve around the physicalness of being human. I suppose that I see architecture not as an element aloof from human existence. Instead, I see architecture as an extension of what it is to be human. Architecture can provide a sensible balance of science and art as an expression of human values. It is a necessary art, but to make it only representative of necessity also defeats its purpose.

What advice would you offer young architects who are looking to create their breakout works?

Never place architecture ahead of life and experiencing life. Architecture is best when it is informed by the experience of life. Also, do not enter the profession with the feeling that finding a job is the primary role of the graduate of architecture. It should not overshadow the larger goal of improving the built environment. Find as many related tasks as possible, whether it is donating time to nonprofit agencies that affect the built environment or actually building things such as furniture. Write poetry and explore places. Find alternative routes to success. Otherwise, you may find yourself successful but still lacking purpose.