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TODD SAUNDERS (1969-)
Saunders was born in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada and moved with his family to Nova Scotia toward the end of high school. He has said that what he knows about building he learned one summer in Gander, cutting and stripping logs and drawing up a cabin with his family — sketch, model, build, the same sequence he still follows. He took a Bachelor of Environmental Planning at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax in 1992, spending a semester as an exchange student at the Rhode Island School of Design, then a Master of Architecture at McGill University in Montreal in 1995. Travelling afterwards and researching northern ecological communities, he found work in Norway almost by accident, taking a job in Bergen on a Monday and meeting his future wife that Friday. He has lived in Bergen ever since and founded Saunders Architecture there in 1998.
From 2002 to 2006 Saunders worked in partnership with the Stavanger architect Tommie Wilhelmsen. Saunders has taught part-time at the Bergen School of Architecture since 2001 and has been a visiting professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, at Cornell, and at Yale. Early on he worked every second week with Anders Frøstrup, one of Norway’s foremost carpenters and the author of Tømrerteori, while building up the practice. He was named one of the five greatest architects under fifty by the Huffington Post in 2011, the same year he was nominated for the Bergen Kommune architecture prize, and the office appears on Baunetz’s list of the hundred best architects in the world. His Fogo Island work is the subject of the 2015 documentary Strange and Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island. His work is collected in Todd Saunders: Architecture in Northern Landscapes and Todd Saunders: New Northern Houses. Website.
He is best known by the public for two structures, one at either end of the North Atlantic.
The Aurland/Stegastein Lookout, Bjørgavegen 83, Aurland, Norway, completed in 2005 with his then-partner Tommie Wilhelmsen, is a viewing platform on the Aurlandsfjellet National Tourist Route: a plank of laminated pine that runs 30 metres out into the air 650 metres above the Aurlandsfjord, then turns down and stops at a pane of glass, with nothing but a cable rail between the visitor and the drop. It opened to the public in 2006, was nominated by the Norwegian association of architects for the Mies van der Rohe Award and took the 2006 Norwegian construction prize.
The Fogo Island Inn at 210 Main Road, Joe Batt's Arm, Newfoundland, Canada, completed in 2013. Zita Cobb's Shorefast Foundation commissioned it to turn a collapsing cod economy toward art and tourism on the island where Saunders had grown up nearby. Twenty-nine rooms over four floors and an outbuilding, 48,440 square feet, propped on stilts above the rock in the manner of the fishing stages along the shore, with rooftop saunas by Rintala Eggertsson, a cinema run with the National Film Board of Canada, and furniture made on the island and sold to guests. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen, Joseph Kellner, Attila Béres and Nick Herder; structural engineers, DBA Consulting Engineers Ltd; local architects, Sheppard Case Architects, St. John's. Six artists' studios for the same client came first; four built between 2010 and 2011 and are listed below.
2002 - The Kjepsø Cabin, aka Hardanger Retreat, aka Hytte i Hardanger, Kjepsø, Hardangerfjord, Norway. Designed with Tommie Wilhelmsen and built by the two of them. 220 square feet.
2003 - The Maria Bauer House, aka Åland Summer House, aka Summer House Åland, aka Hytte Aaland, Åland Islands, Finland. Designed with Tommie Wilhelmsen. 480 square feet.
2003 - The Senter for Byøkologi House, aka Brakke House, Bergen, Norway. Three disused construction barracks, designed with Tommie Wilhelmsen and rebuilt into a single dwelling on parking lots in the centre of Bergen with architecture and interior architecture students and other volunteers, as a protest against the cost of student housing in the city. Reused materials, flexible rooms and solar collectors throughout. 650 square feet. It housed the Bergen Housing Exhibition of 2003, A4? — eller skal vi bo på nye måter, from 5 May to 26 June, with three people living in it for the run of the show. Organized by Norsk Senter for Byøkologi, BoligAksjonen and NSU-Bergen; carpentry by Mats Odin Rustøy. Status unknown.
2005 - The Elisabeth Halvorsen and Helge Hansen Addition, aka Halvorsen Hansen Addition, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Mats Odin Rustøy. 860 square feet. Photographs by Michael Perlmutter.
2005 - The Hy Rosenberg and Richard Stark Cottage, aka Blueskymod Cottage, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Prototype for a prefab house, commissioned by the Toronto entrepreneur Hy Rosenberg and the builder Richard Stark for BlueSkyMod, a company selling cottages shipped flat and assembled on site. Ontario red cedar. 650 square feet. The prototype was built and shown at the IIDEX/NeoCon exhibition in Toronto in September 2005 and again that October. Status unknown.
2005 - The University of Oulu House, aka Oulu, Oulu, Finland. Designed with Mats Odin Rustøy and twenty-one international architecture students. Fourteen metres long.
2007 - The Eli Bakka and Jan Sem-Olsen House, aka Villa Storingavika, Bergen, Norway. Project team, Geneviève Charbonneau and Joakim Skajaa. Structure and services, Node AS, Bergen; contractor, Hannisdal & Søviknes AS. Three materials only: glass, black-stained fir and oiled Canadian cedar. A 200-metre pipe draws the constant heat of the sea into the floors. Photographs by Michael Perlmutter and Jan Lillebø. 3,270 square feet. Published in Dezeen and ArchDaily in 2008.
2007 - The Svein Halvorsen and Inger Løland House, aka Summer House Sogn og Fjordane, Rysjedalsvika, Norway. Designed with Tommie Wilhelmsen. 860 square feet.
2007 - The Henning and Nina Rasmussen House, aka Villa Rasmussen, Bergen, Norway. 2,580 square feet. Status unknown.
2007 - The Hanne Flæsland and Cam Uppalaka House, aka Villa Soltun, Bergen, Norway. 2,370 square feet. Status unknown.
2008 - The Reinhard Haverkamp Atelier, aka Atelier Haverkamp, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Annie Pednault and Geneviève St-André. 380 square feet. Status unknown.
2008 - The Cecilie and Hans Christian Seim House, aka Villa HC, Bergen, Norway. A 1940s house that had grown too small for its owners, rebuilt on the original foundation to keep the footprint and the cost down, overlooking Nordåsvatn. Designed with Thomas Pfeffer and Christina Maier. 1,940 square feet.
2009 - aka Villa G, Hjellestad, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen and Thomas Pfeffer. 3,960 square feet.
2010 - The Long Studio, Joe Batt's Arm, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. The first of the studios built for the Shorefast Foundation and Fogo Island Arts. Designed with Sheppard Case Architects, Attila Béres, Ryan Jørgensen, Joseph Kellner, Colin Hertberger, Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach, Rubén Sáez López, Soizic Bernard and Nick Herder. 1,400 square feet.
2010 - The Nancy Krieg House, aka Salt Spring Island House and Studio, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. A house and a studio on the slopes of Mount Tuam looking across the Salish Sea to the San Juan Islands, joined by a bridge. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen, Attila Béres, Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach and Jim Helset. 1,100 square feet. Photographs by Ema Peter and CJ Berg.
2010 - aka Villa Morild, Gulen, Norway. Built for Linn Dyveke and Njål Hansen Wilberg. Designed with Attila Béres and Joseph Kellner. 2,480 square feet.
2010 - The Ivan Hjermann House, aka Villa Hjermann, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Thomas Pfeffer and Ryan Jørgensen. 3,770 square feet.
2010 - The Nydal Bygg House, aka Villa Nydal, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Thomas Tysseland. 1,990 square feet.
2011 - aka Tower Studio, Shoal Bay, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. A tall, twisting studio on the rocks at Shoal Bay. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen, Attila Béres, Nick Herder and Thomas Tysseland. 520 square feet. Featured in Canadian Architect, June 2012.
2011 - aka Bridge Studio, Deep Bay, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. Reached on foot from Fogo's smallest community over a run of timber boardwalks, above an inland pond. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen, Thomas Pfeffer, Olivier Bourgeois and Nick Herder. 310 square feet.
2011 - aka Squish Studio, Tilting, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach, Rubén Sáez López and Nick Herder. 300 square feet. Featured in Architecture Today, September 2015. The four built studios were an Architizer A+ Awards Jury Winner in 2016.
Two further studios, the Short Studio at Little Seldom, 860 square feet, and the Fogo Studio at Fogo, 650 square feet, were designed but not built.
2011 - The Richard Muller Cabin, aka Tyin Cabin, aka Hytte Tyin, Tyin, Valdres, Norway. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen, Attila Béres and Rubén Sáez López. 2,310 square feet.
2012 - The Stokke Forest Stair, aka Himmeltrappen, Sti for Øye, Stokke, Norway. A stair of Corten steel and oak in the Sti for Øye sculpture park, set in the Vestfold oak forest at the highest point of the site and looking east towards a castle. 430 square feet. Landscape architect, Rainer Stange. Photographs by Bent René Synnevåg.
2012 - aka Summer House Kalvenes, Austevoll, Norway. Three buildings for the Kalvenes brothers. Designed with Olivier Bourgeois. 1,290, 970 and 910 square feet. Status unknown.
2013 - The Martine and Stein Christian Mohn House, aka Villa Mohn, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen and Christopher Woodford. 3,010 square feet.
2013 - aka Villa H, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres. 4,410 square feet.
2013 - The Nils and Monica Vågen House, aka Villa Vågen, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres and Zdenek Dohnalek. 1,940 square feet.
2013 - The Rune Aasegg House, aka Villa Aasegg, Bergen, Norway. 2,220 square feet. Status unknown.
2013 - The Randi and Jarle Bertelsen House, aka Villa Bertelsen, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Michal Hanko and Ryan Jørgensen. 3,550 square feet. Status unknown.
2013 - aka Villa Foldnes, Bergen, Norway. For Anne Fjell and Arne Otto Foldnes. Designed with Attila Béres and Zsuzsanna Kiss. 2,800 square feet. Status unknown.
2014 - The Todd Saunders House, aka Villa S, Paradis, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres, Ryan Jørgensen and Márk Szőke; interiors with Hannes Wingate. 3,770 square feet. Photographs by Bent René Synnevåg. Featured in Dagens Næringsliv D2 2014.
2014 - aka Slice, Slåttevik, Haugesund, Norway. A 160-square-foot garden house. Designed with Attila Béres and Adam Siemaszkiewicz.
2014 - The Willie and Line Dawson House, aka Villa Moldbakken, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach and Chris Woodford. 2,150 square feet.
2014 - The Jostein Alendal House, aka Summer House Alendal, Vignafjord, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres and Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach. 1,080 square feet.
2014 - aka Summer House Fusa, Fusa, Norway. For Åsne Ådland-Dale and Kjetil Dale. Designed with Mia Horve. 1,080 square feet. Status unknown.
2014 - aka Villa Britse, Stockholm, Sweden. For Leif and Malin Britse. 2,690 square feet. Status unknown.
2014 - The Tara Murphy House, aka Villa Murphy, Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia, Canada. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach and Attila Béres. 2,800 square feet. Status unknown.
2014 - aka Villa Sangolt, Bergen, Norway. Irregular triangular plan on a restricted site, with a roof terrace. 2,680 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Dybvadskog, Asker, Norway. For Frode Hveding. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen and Joseph Kellner. 3,770 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - The Tom-Asle Flatholm and Heidi Fjell House, aka Villa Flatholm, aka Villa Fjell, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres. 2,580 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Larsen and Sekkingstad, Bergen, Norway. For Georg Larsen and Anne-Kristin Sekkingstad. 2,800 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Liseth, Bergen, Norway. For Jørn Ivar and Marita Liseth. Designed with Attila Béres, Matt McClurg and Zdenek Dohnalek. 4,950 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Mjelde, Bergen, Norway. For Eirik Mjelde and Kristi Bergstrøm Mjelde. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen. 3,010 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Myklebust, Bergen, Norway. For Linda and Lars Kristian Wulff Myklebust. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach. 3,010 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Vogt, Bergen, Norway. For Ivar Chelsom Vogt and Benedicte Mjelde Vogt. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen. 2,690 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Meland, Ørsta, Norway. For Tor Egil Meland. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach. 3,880 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Selje, Selje, Norway. For Atle Riksfjord. Designed with Aino Inkeri Korhonen. 3,370 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka Villa Sejrup, Bergen, Norway. Children's rooms on the ground floor, with the parents' rooms and the common rooms above. 2,690 square feet. Status unknown.
2015 - aka the Jakobsen Sandstad House and Artist Studio, Austrheim, Norway. A house and studio for Anne Jakobsen and Rolf Sandstad. Designed with Olaf Gipser. 1,720 square feet. Status unknown.
2016 - The Stein-Inge Riise and Elisabeth Knutsen House, aka Villa Riise, Haugesund, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres, Aino Inkeri Korhonen and Anja Egebakken. 6,000 square feet. Featured in Wallpaper.
2016 - The Røksund House, aka Villa R, Mosterhamn, Bømlo, Norway. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira, Maxime Rousse, Márk Szőke and Attila Béres. 4,220 square feet. Photographs by Ivar Kvaal. Published in ArchDaily in 2023.
2017 - aka Villa Grieg, Bergen, Norway. On the brow of a hill above Lake Nordås, a short way from Edvard Grieg's own house. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira, Attila Béres, Pål Storsveen and Ricardo Coutinho. 3,080 square feet. Photographs by Ivar Kvaal.
2018 - aka Villa AT, Søgne, Kristiansand, Norway. Designed with Attila Béres, Márk Szőke and Joshua Kievenaar. 3,340 square feet.
2018 - aka Villa Grimseiddalen, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira, Matt McClurg, Maxime Rousse and Attila Béres. Lighting by Louis Poulsen. 3,270 square feet. Photographs by Bent René Synnevåg. Published in ArchDaily in 2023.
2018 - aka Villa Refsnes, Starefossen, Bergen, Norway. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira, Pål Storsveen and Sofia De Sousa Pacheco; interiors, SCH Design, Stine Homstvedt. 4,130 square feet. Photographs by Bent René Synnevåg. Published in ArchDaily in 2023.
2018 - aka Villa S+E, Bergen, Norway. The lower floor holds six student apartments and a communal living area, with their own entrance and terrace, let to fund the upkeep of the house. Interiors by Claesson Koivisto Rune. Designed with Attila Béres and Pål Storsveen. 5,150 square feet.
2018 - The Gerd Johanne Larsen and Hogne Inge Tyssøy House, aka Villa Tyssøy, Tyssøy, Norway. House, studio and store. Designed with Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach, Matt McClurg and Rubén Sáez López. 2,800 square feet.
2018 - The Fogo Island Shed, Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. 750 square feet. Winner of a 2019 A' Design Award and the 2020 World Architecture News award.
2020 - aka Villa Austevoll, Selbjørn, Austevoll, Norway. On an island south of Bergen reachable only by boat. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira and Attila Béres. 3,070 square feet. Photographs by Ivar Kvaal.
2020 - aka Lily Pad, aka Villa Lake Rosseau, Lake Rosseau, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. Designed with Pedro Léger Pereira, Attila Béres, Matt McClurg, Márk Szőke and Ryan Jørgensen. 4,310 square feet. Photographs by Younes Bounhar.
2021 - The XS Cabin, aka XS Mikrohus, Bergen, Norway. A 260-square-foot micro house that breaks into twelve pieces so it can be trucked or floated to a remote site and put together there, and taken apart and moved again. The first was installed temporarily on the docks in Bergen. Intended as the first of a series at 270, 540, 810 and 1,080 square feet. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen and Éva Baráth.
2022 - aka Y House, Carraig Ridge, Alberta, Canada. On a ridge above Anna Lake, looking to the Rockies, in the Carraig Ridge community northwest of Calgary. Clad entirely in Corten. Designed with Attila Béres, Pedro Léger Pereira, Pål Storsveen, Monika Jasikova and Joe Kellner. 2,050 square feet. Photographs by Ema Peter.
2023 - The Todd Saunders Complex, aka Vassvika, Vassvika, Norway. Saunders bought this property on a peninsula half an hour from the centre of Bergen in 2016 and has been restoring it since, with his two daughters, as a retreat and a place to work without deadlines. Seven older buildings rather than one house: four are finished as living space, sleeping space, a library and a bath house, a stabbur is becoming a studio, and a boat house and tool shed remain. Designed with Ryan Jørgensen and Éva Baráth. Photographs by Bent René Synnevåg.
Year unknown - aka Villa T, Bergen, Norway.
Year unknown - aka Villa M, Os, Norway.
Year unknown - aka Villa 4m, Bergen, Norway. For 4m AS. Designed with Attila Béres. 1,990 square feet. Status unknown.
Year unknown - aka Villa Russo, Norway. 10,550 square feet. Status unknown.
Year unknown - aka Villa Brussels, Brussels, Belgium. A curved concrete slab carries the upper floor over a glazed ground floor and a paved terrace. Designed with Attila Béres. 10,550 square feet. Unsure if built.
Year unknown - aka the New York City Loft, New York, New York. A loft conversion. 2,690 square feet. Unbuilt.
Year unknown - aka Yucca House, Paradise Valley, Arizona. A competition entry that took second prize. 10,760 square feet. Designed with Joseph Kellner, Jon Lund and Quin Vollenberg. Visualizations by Mir. Unbuilt.
Year unknown - aka Powder Mountain, Eden, Utah. Residences for Summit Powder Mountain, a 10,000-acre development. Saunders is one of a group of architects with Studio Ma, Skylab, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, JVA, Elliott Workgroup, Langvardt Design Group, R&A Architects, Sparano + Mooney, Marmol Radziner, Bicuadro, Bertoldi, Olson Kundig, PBW and Grupo H. The site sits at 8,400 feet in the Wasatch Range and is planned for some 500 houses and a village centre. Saunders also chaired the jury, with Jenny Wu, for the development's 2015 cabin competition, the Mountain Architecture Prototype, won by Srdan Nad and Grupo H with a scheme called The Wooden Tents.
Year unknown - aka Arete Farm, United States. Status unknown.
Sources include: Todd Saunders; Saunders Architecture; Store norske leksikon; Todd Saunders: Architecture in Northern Landscapes (Birkhäuser, first and second editions); Todd Saunders: New Northern Houses; ArchDaily; Dezeen; Archello; Divisare; Wallpaper; Canadian Architect; Maclean's; CBC News; The Architect's Newspaper; Metropolis; vassvika.com; Kartverket; Statens vegvesen.