Kjetil Trædal Thorsen

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Class of 2023, Norway
Architect and Founding Partner of Snøhetta AS

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Kjetil Trædal Thorsen brings ESG values into every development from Egypt’s new library of Alexandria to the Norwegian Opera and Ballet.

Sustainable development is climbing in importance on C-suite agendas. But for Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, it’s been the operating ethos of his architecture and design firm Snøhetta since he cofounded it in 1987, inspired by a UN report published that year.

Kjetil often takes an untraditional approach, asking critical questions to rethink planning, building regulation and procurement processes. Snøhetta kick-started its growth in 1989 with the winning entry for the new library of Alexandria, Egypt. This was followed by the commission for the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City, among many others.

Today, Snøhetta is known worldwide as a profitable practice of architecture, landscapes, interiors, product design, and graphic and digital design, with 400 employees from around 40 countries. In addition to its home office in Oslo, the practice has studios in Australia, Austria, China, France and the US.

Since the beginning, ESG has been a core value and pervades every choice Snøhetta makes. Snøhetta measures its projects’ effects on ESG — for example, it measures CO2 reduction in Times Square, the increase in fish flora under the opera in Oslo and work-life gender equality at the Library of Alexandria. Snøhetta knows that well-conceived designs can help things run more fluidly, improve people’s well-being and make life more enjoyable.