New cultural and educational hub Čoarvemátta draws inspiration from Sámi heritage and traditional building customs

Čoarvemátta is the new shared facility of The Sámi National Theater Beaivváš, and the Sámi High School and Reindeer Herding School, two important cultural institutions of The Sámi settlement area of Sápmi. Snøhetta, together with 70°N architecture and artist Joar Nango, won the architectural competition for the new Sámi theater and school building in 2021 and now the prominent building has been inaugurated. The project interprets Sámi architecture with references from crafts, materials, and nature.

The name Čoarvemátta comes from the Sámi words for horn and root, after the innermost and strongest part of the reindeer antlers – often used in duodji, traditional Sámi crafts and handicrafts. This symbolizes different qualities and strengths and represents elements that unite, as Čoarvemátta will be a unifying force for the institutions that share the building: the Sámi National Theater Beaivváš and the Sámi High School and Reindeer Herding School.

“We are proud to have contributed to putting this long-awaited and important building in its place. A combined theater and reindeer herding school is a fun program to work with for an architect. It is a testament to good architecture that two really non-interoperable institutions are successfully connected. The project also provides exceptionally good use of resources, which also play a vital role in traditional Sámi handicrafts, duodji, where it’s an important principle that everything from the animal can be used for something – the skin, the nostril – and the horn,” said Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Snøhetta Founding Partner. ​ ​

“The innermost part of the reindeer horn also symbolizes different qualities and strengths and represents elements that unite, as we hope Čoarvemátta will be a unifying force for the institutions that share the building, and the Sámi community at large,” added Thorsen.

The National Reindeer Herding School was merged with the Sámi High School in 1988. Five years later, Beaivváš was given the status of one of Norway’s four national theater institutions. Since then, the school and the theater have been of great importance to Sámi culture and education, but both have also been in need of new premises for a long time.

The co-location means that the institutions can take advantage of each other’s facilities and jointly operate robust, spacious halls and rooms. The building facilitates synergies between building and user, theater and school, and architecture and landscape. This is in line with the Sámi ideology of taking care of and using all resources.

Design and Architecture

The new building is located in Kautokeino in the middle of Finnmarksvidda, Norway’s largest and northernmost plateau. All four of the building’s facades relate to the various landscape spaces that surround it in different ways. The two-storey building sits low in the landscape and has proportions that harmonize with the surrounding hills and heights with no sharp angles breaking with the organic forms. The roof slopes on both sides of the building (north, south) to minimize the height effect of the project seen from a distance, and forms at the same time an entry situation towards the access from southwest.

“We wanted the building to be as close to nature as possible. Natural materials such as wood and stone are used, the building follows shapes in the terrain, and the roof is pulled down to the ground to meet the landscape. The elongated, continuous shape can give associations to carvings in a subject, such as a tool made of reindeer horns,” said Bård Vaag Stangnes, Senior Architect and Project Lead, Snøhetta.

The new shared space has a branching shape, with a main entrance and vestibule located at its center, creating a gathering place for both the school’s and the theater’s users. From here, the building body stretches in three directions – adapting both visually and functionally to the landscape – with a wing for each of the three functions: the theater, workshops and teaching rooms, and the school’s administration.

The vestibule is the focal point of the building. The curved lines, the highlight of the roof with skylights like from a reahpen, smoke hole, and the visible load-bearing glulam wooden structure, are inspired by light wooden constructions typical of reindeer-herding Sámi areas, such as the lávvu.

As the natural meeting point, the space is well-suited for activities such as duodji, Sámi handicrafts, cooking, and theater plays. The large amphistaircase is a unifying common room for students and theater audiences and provides a good overview and connection to the 2nd floor. Large glass panels at both ends of the vestibule provide an open, well-lit space with good daylight conditions and a view of the two mountain peaks Bealjážat – ‘the two little ears’ – a landmark in Kautokeino.

“The shape of the building springs from the idea of creating a unified volume for the theater and the school, and of gathering the functions around a connection point – the meeting place. Elements have also been taken from Sámi building traditions – the skylight in the vestibule, the visible supporting structure, and the unifying roof with its soft shape that opens towards the entrance,” added Stangnes.

Materials and color

The façade of the building is made with standing wood clad in ore pine. The massive roof measures 4,930 m2 and is clad with 34,000 meters of Kebony. The Alta slate stone on the theater’s gable wall has been reused from the village’s old primary school, which has been demolished. Inside the vestibule and corridors, the polished concrete floors mimic the ground outside the building, with elements of locally mined stone, including slate and masi quartzite, in various shades of grey and green. On the upper floor, there is colored linoleum on the floors. The walls have wooden slats and oiled smooth-edged wood paneling, while all the fixtures are carved in pine and ash veneer.

The approach to colors and material concept for the school is holistic. The center of the building, around the foyer, vestibule and theater halls, is painted in warm, red shades. Then the color scheme becomes cooler, and the further away from the hearth you get, the colder the colors become, with bluish tones at each end of the building’s wings. Contrasts between door, wall and floor within the different zones have clear references to Sámi use of color. This makes a strong contrast to the building’s exterior, which is clad in white for the most part of the year.

The school has a strong desire to showcase the students’ constantly new works both for the benefit of the school itself and for visitors. Larger wall panels and hanging surfaces have therefore been set aside for this purpose in several places in this building, preferably where many can benefit from it.

Landscape

The shape of the building naturally forms three outdoor spaces. The one facing south constitutes the main entrance and a space in front of it. The forecourt is an intimate and circular space with arrán, a fire pit, sitting stones and an amphitheater. The sitting stones are taken from the plateau just outside, and this flexible room can be used by both school and theater. The Alta slate used here comes from a quarry near the construction site.

The outdoor area on the other side of the theater wing is intended for the school’s building trade workshops, and is shielded both visually and from the prevailing wind direction and harsh weather at Finnmarksvidda. North of the building, large areas have been set aside for reindeer fences, which are directly linked to the reindeer herding department inside the building, and have been built by local reindeer experts. On the east side, the plateau meets the building in a natural way, and the terrain and vegetation have been preserved as close as possible to the building.

Over the entire construction site, soil that has had to be removed has been preserved; the top layer has been temporarily stored, and subsequently returned to all surfaces around the building, so that the seed stocks are intact. Restoring the plateau landscape takes time but is allowed as new plants with new roots prevent the original seeds from germinating.

“The Sámi culture has no tradition of cultivating landscapes into parks and urban spaces. When you step out of the lavvu, you are directly in nature – in the landscape. Much of the project has thus been about creating a strategy for how the area can be revegetated and the plateau return to encircling the building after the construction period has ended,” added Thea Kvamme Hartmann, Senior Landscape Architect, Snøhetta.

Natural ground heating

Čoarvemátta meets the requirements of the Passive house standard, which means that the building is of very high quality, with a good indoor climate and extremely low energy requirements. The building is 90 percent self-sufficient in energy to heating and cooling from wells and heat pumps thanks to 40 geowells drilled about 250 meters into the ground. The wells supply two heat pumps that heat and cool the building, while exchangers for the energy wells dump surplus heat back again. On the coldest winter days, the system is supplemented with an electric boiler.

The building also has ambitious environmental goals, which include being able to document a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 30 percent for energy, materials and the construction site compared to the project’s reference building calculated as total emissions in tonnes of CO2 over the project’s life cycle.

Signage and wayfinding

Snøhetta has also made the signage and wayfinding program that follows the project’s visuality and works complementary to architecture, interior, and landscape design. It is primarily functional, but like the building, it also has subtle references to traditional craftsmanship and use of materials. The signs are made of powder-coated steel and pine, and the graphic elements, including typography and pictograms, mirror the building’s alignment. Iconography is used extensively for readability at a distance to meet the requirements for multilingualism (Northern, Southern, Lule Sámi, and Bokmål).

Commissioned artworks

KORO, the Norwegian state’s professional body for art in public spaces, has been responsible for the art procurement of Čoarvemátta. A total of six new works of art have been created for the new building. After a closed competition, Máret Ánne Sara (b. 1983) was invited to design the theater’s stage curtain. Britta Marakatt-Labba (b. 1951) is one of Sápmi’s most renowned contemporary artists, and has created the embroidery Miin Duoddarat / Our Plains, with direct references to the history of the theater for the building’s common room. In addition to the new works, two larger, existing works of art by two of Sápmi’s most famous and influential artists, Aage Gaup (1943–2021) and Iver Jåks (1932–2007), have been moved from the old school building to the new building.