Steven Holl stood on a small stage north of the Arctic Circle clad in a yellow linen suit. In front of him, an impressively deep and wide press pool. Behind him, the mostly complete, and wholly controversial, Knut Hamsun Centre—a queerly cut museum dedicated to a Nobel Prize–winning author-cum-Nazi sympathizer that had convinced every journalist in Norway to schlep up on a weekday to a remote village in Nordland County, where the summer sun never sets on the fjord. It was the museum’s hard-fought-for opening ceremony and the 150th anniversary of Hamsun’s birth. The architect grinned from ear to ear.

“I think controversy is excellent because that’s also what makes people think,” said Holl, whose flamboyant suit choice was inspired by Hamsun, who often evoked the color yellow in his spare, dark works. “I think Hamsun was all about that.” Read more…