Program

Kurt Marsh is a Landscape Architect and Project Leader at Snøhetta in New York where he has worked since 2017. At Snøhetta, Kurt has worked on a wide range of projects across different climates, cities and landscapes in the United States. He has worked on small gardens and plazas, libraries, streetscapes, as well as several large-scale urban design proposals. Kurt is currently leading the Landscape design of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in western North Dakota, the El Paso Children’s Museum, and a visioning plan for Speer Blvd and Cherry Creek in Denver, Colorado. Kurt’s work at Snøhetta has focused on the creation of vibrant public spaces designed to bring people in closer contact with their cities, landscapes, ecologies and each other. Recently, he worked with colleagues on Snøhetta’s installation for the European Cultural Centre’s Time, Space, Existence exhibitions in Venice – a provocative seating element designed for the Marinaressa garden facing the Venetian lagoon. Each project at Snøhetta takes cues from its urban and landscape context and hopes to make these contexts visible to communities and visitors. Buildings and Landscapes work together to refocus attention on the social and ecological lives of the cities and rural landscapes in which we work. At Snøhetta, Kurt has worked alongside the studio to design socially and ecologically productive landscapes across scales and environments.

For more than 30 years, Snøhetta has designed some of the world’s most notable public and cultural projects that enhance their surroundings and celebrate the human and natural world. Since its inception, the practice has embraced a transdisciplinary approach, and it integrates architecture, landscape, interiors, product, graphic, digital design, and art across all its projects. The co-creative nature between Snøhetta’s different disciplines is an essential driving force of the practice that produces unexpected outcomes and public benefits.
Snøhetta’s working method practises a simultaneous exploration of traditional handicraft and cutting-edge digital technology. At the heart of all Snøhetta’s work lies a commitment to social and environmental sustainability, shaping the built environment through design in the service of humanism. Snøhetta believes well-conceived design can help society function more efficiently, improve people’s well-being, and make life more enjoyable. Every project is designed with strong, meaningful concepts in mind – concepts that can translate the ethos of its users and their context.
Snøhetta began in 1989 with the competition-winning entry for the new national library of Alexandria, Egypt. This was later followed by the commission for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center in New York City, among many others.
The practice has a global presence, with offices spanning from Oslo, Paris, and Innsbruck, to New York, Hong Kong, Adelaide, Shenzhen, and San Francisco.
Snøhetta is currently working on a wide range of international projects, including the Far Rockaway Writer’s Library in New York, Natural History Museum of Lille, Esbjerg Maritime Center in Denmark, Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, and the Shanghai Grand Opera House. Recently completed works include the 550 Madison Garden and Revitalization in New York City, the Ordrupgaard Art Museum expansion in Denmark, Le Monde Group Headquarters in Paris, Europe’s first underwater restaurant, Under, the redesign of the public space in Times Square, the expansion to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lascaux IV: The International Centre for Cave Art, Powerhouse Brattørkaia, and the design for Norway’s new banknotes.
Among its many recognitions, Snøhetta has been awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and the Aga Kahn Prize for Architecture for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2016, Snøhetta was named Wall Street Journal Magazine’s Architecture Innovator of the Year, and the practice has been named one of the world’s most innovative companies by Fast Company two years in a row. In 2020, Snøhetta was awarded the National Design Award for Architecture, bestowed by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

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