The Snøhetta Foundation turns creativity into concrete projects: master classes, children’s workshops, symposia, and open archives that people can actually use. By linking education, dialogue, and shared knowledge, we use design to improve how people learn together, meet across differences, and care for their environments. 

We focus on three urgent problems: people’s growing distance from nature and the built environment, the disappearance of hands-on, embodied learning, and the weakening of trust between citizens and institutions. Through Sensing Space (education), the Symposia Series (public events and exhibitions), and the Living Archive (open cultural resources), we turn these challenges into specific programs with clear partners, audiences, and outcomes.

In practice, this means expanding access to design education through master classes in places like Alexandria, Mumbai, and Berlin, and through the Education Equality Initiative in underrepresented regions. It means developing Sensing Space workshops with schools and universities, where children and students learn through movement, language, and making, rather than only through screens and theory.

It also means hosting symposia on peace and reconstruction together with partners such as Norad, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Nobel Peace Center, and building long-term collaborations with institutions like the National Museum and the National Archives of Norway to keep thousands of models, drawings, and stories publicly available. Exhibitions such as People and the Library of Alexandria and the Living Archive at Skur 39 turn this material into shared cultural knowledge rather than closed corporate history.

Students, educators, and communities benefit directly: more young people gain access to creative learning; teachers get concrete tools and case studies; and local institutions gain partners and content they can build on. By keeping our archives open, our programs collaborative, and our methods shareable, the Foundation turns design into an everyday tool for fairer education, stronger cultural exchange, and more resilient communities over time.