Knut Hamsun Center

Knut Hamsun, Norway’s most inventive twentieth-century writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, fabricated new forms of expression in his first novel Hunger. This center dedicated to Hamsun is located above the Arctic Circle by the village of Presteid of Hamarøy, near the farm where the writer grew up. The 27,000 square-feet center includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a café, and an auditorium for museum and community use.

Influenced by Hamsun’s explorations of the intricacies of the human mind, the building is conceived as an archetypal and intensified compression of spirit in space and light, and as a Hamsun character in architectonic terms. The concept for the museum, “Building as a Body: Battleground of Invisible Forces,” is realized from inside and out. The wood exterior is punctuated by hidden impulses piercing through the surface. The spine of the building body, constructed from perforated brass, is the central elevator providing handicapped and freight access to all parts of the building.

The board form concrete structure with stained white interiors is illuminated by diagonal rays of sunlight calculated to ricochet through the section on certain days of the year. The stained black wood exterior skin alludes to Norwegian Medieval wooden stave churches and on the roof garden, long chutes of bamboo give the appearance of grass akin to traditional Norwegian sod roofs. Strange, surprising and phenomenal experiences in space perspective and light will provide an inspiring frame for the exhibitions.