Oslo-based architects Stein Halvorsen and Christian Sundby was commissioned for designing the Sami Parliament Building. Shaped in a half circle, it has an area of 5,300 m2 with total cost of 127 million NOK. The main assembly hall has the form of traditional Lapp tent, lavvo, which acts as the focal point of the whole building. There are perhaps two methods of making architecture for a culture whose people are nomadic inhabitants of their territory. Either it makes a building that echoes this itinerant lifestyle, touching the ground lightly, or it makes something that is a solid, monumental figure, an icon of permanence.
With Sami Parliament Building, Halvorsen and Sundby’s approach something in between. The Sami Parliament building consists of 3 parts: 55 offices, 5 conference rooms, the plenary assembly hall, auditorium, display-hall and rooms for The Sami Special Library, facilities for The Samediggi archives, and a public restaurant. The complex is a clever mix of abstraction and expression, and an appropriate landmark for a society in transition.
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