Snøhetta’s Underwater Restaurant Looks Like A Stranded Spaceship
 Come 2019, a new structure will rise from the sea in the bay of Båly, a fishing village on the cold coast of beautiful Norway. It could easily be mistaken for an alien spaceship stranded on a shoreline, half of its fuselage resting underwater on the sea floor. But this structure won’t host otherworldly lifeforms in suspended animation. It will contain guests of the human kind: Restaurant patrons.The semi-submerged concrete building is actually a fine dining spot that will allow people to eat seafood and other delicatessen prepared by young Danish chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard, while looking into the freezing waters of the North Sea through giant windows made of acrylic. Designed by Snøhetta–the architecture and design studio based in Oslo and New York–the restaurant will start construction in February 2018. Julie Skogheim, the company’s Marketing Communications Coordinator says that they are shooting to complete it in early 2019. Norway’s coastline has become a hotspot for architectural attractions, as the New York Times recently pointed out. An elegant tourist trap, if you will. She told me via email that “the project is financed by the owners, Under AS–a company where the company Lindesnes Havhotell will have a 65% ownership. The remaning percentages are owned by various local investors.” |
