Home Care In Norway, IA

Snøhetta unveiled the design of a new building and landscape design for the Vesterheim campus in Decorah, Iowa. The campus, which also contains the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School, explores the diversity of American immigration through the lens of the Norwegian-American experience. The new 8,000-square-foot building, known as “the Commons,” is set to become the entry point and main gathering space for the cultural campus. Aside from anchoring the site, the intervention also aims to strengthen the site’s connection to the city. The building is scheduled to be completed in the Summer of 2023.

In 2019, Snøhetta designed a master plan for Vesterheim with the purpose of unifying historic structures, outdoor classrooms, and revitalized commercial buildings. The resulting Vesterheim’s Heritage Park offers public green spaces and year-round access to various immigrant-built structures brought from across the Upper Midwest region. The outdoors museum also brings attention to the unexpectedly rugged landscapes of the region. In turn, the Commons is planned to define and anchor the composition and create an intuitive entry point.

A soaring wood canopy defines the image of the Commons building from street level, leading visitors to a reception lobby illuminated through a wood-clad oculus. Flexible upper-level galleries invite visitors to explore the collection of artifacts and artworks while creating connections to the Westby-Torgerson Education Center and Vesterheim’s Folk Art School. The second floor includes spaces for study rooms, digital workspaces, and offices, in addition to the galleries.

The building takes inspiration from Norwegian craft traditions as it employs humble materials to create a warm and welcoming experience. The mass timber wood frame will be fabricated in Minnesota, while bricks for the exterior walls are sourced from . By using local materials, the intervention strives to honor the culture of Decorah and become an invitation to further explore and appreciate Decorah’s downtown architecture and the region’s verdant landscapes.

’s portfolio includes a large number of cultural projects, such as the redesign and expansion of the Hopkins Center for the Arts in New Hampshire, the expansion of New York’s Museum of Sex in Miami, and the design of a new Public Library branch in New York City. Following the theme of migration, ArchDaily has also curated a list of projects and interventions that investigate the condition of migrants, with a specific focus on the US-Mexico border.

Blending culture and modern design, American-Norwegian architecture firm, Snøhetta, and Vesterheim Heritage Park have opened the new addition to the Vesterheim campus in Decorah, Iowa. This expansive campus, housing the world’s largest collection of Norwegian-American cultural artifacts, introduces The Commons, a 743-m² (8,000-sf) structure featuring outdoor and indoor spaces.

The Commons pays tribute to Norwegian craft traditions using locally sourced brick, wood, and textured concrete. The mass timber wood frame, crafted in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and brick exterior from Adel, Iowa, continue the tradition of celebrating Decorah’s architecture and lush landscapes with local materials.

The new building, topped with a striking wooden canopy, houses a public reception lobby and event space that mirrors the surrounding park’s outdoor charm. Upper-level galleries provide state-of-the-art facilities, a digital production studio, and a light-filled lobby adorned by a wooden oculus.

This versatile space seamlessly connects with Vesterheim’s Folk Art School, creating an immersive experience. The second-floor gallery opens to a park-view terrace, facilitating year-round indoor and outdoor events. The third floor hosts digital workspaces and offices.

Architectural elements in The Commons draw inspiration from Norwegian culture, featuring a welcoming timber canopy reminiscent of renowned boat designs, such as the Colin Archer boat from Risør, and the Restauration craft, first landing in the U.S. in 1825. The timber frames with concrete footings draw from traditional Norwegian “stabbur” (storehouses), and the textured concrete is inspired by the work of Erling Viksja, the architect of Norway’s national government building. Inside, the oculus resembles “Lavvu.” tents of the Sami people, indigenous to Scandinavian Peninsula.

Vesterheim Commons stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of Norwegian immigrants in the U.S., offering a platform for understanding the experiences of all immigrants, while invigorating Decorah and the Driftless Area with its design and profound cultural connections.

The Vesterheim Commons project, deeply rooted in Norwegian influence, seamlessly intertwines the historical essence of Vesterheim’s Heritage Park with Water Street, the town’s bustling main thoroughfare.

Vesterheim showcases the diversity of American immigration through the lens of the Norwegian-American experience. It presents the finest in historic and contemporary Norwegian folk and fine arts while serving as an educational hub offering a wide range of online and in-person folk art classes, exhibition programs, and tours to Norway.

The list below shows other collaborators on the project:

Architect of record: BNIM

General contractor: McGough

Landscape contractor: 2nd Nature

Cost consultant: Directional Logic

Structural engineer: Fast + Epp / MBJ Engineers

Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP), and lighting engineer: Morrissey Engineering

Civil engineer: Erdman Engineering

Acoustics engineer: ARUP

Sustainability consultant: Atelier 10

Mass timber fabricator: Bell Structural Solutions

Brick fabricator: Glen-Gery Brick

Mason: Berger Masonry

Concrete fabricator: Wicks Construction

Entry Sign woodworker: Jock Holmen

Vesterheim curtain wall contractor: W.L. Hall

Snøhetta includes wooden oculus for Norwegian-American museum extension in Iowa

Snøhetta has completed an addition to a Norwegian-American museum and folk art school in Iowa, which includes a large wooden oculus and a mass-timber frame.

Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School, explores the Norwegian-American immigration experience through folk and fine ar in Decorah, Iowa.

Working with architect of record BNIM, Snøhetta created an 8,000 square feet (743 square metres) building for the museum, as well as adjoining outdoor spaces that connect the museum's Heritage Park to the street.

"As an American-Norwegian company, Snøhetta is grateful and excited to play a part in recontextualizing ? the experiences, art, and crafts of Norwegian immigrants here in the United States since the 1820s," said Snøhetta founding partner Craig Dykers.

"The Commons and Heritage Park will create new opportunities for considering and understanding the experience of all immigrants to the United States, and contribute to the vitality of Decorah and the driftless region."

Called the Vesterheim Commons, the building spans three floors and contains flexible event space, galleries, offices, a photography production studio and an outdoor terrace.

It also contains an interior connection to the neighbouring Folk Art School, which hosts classes in rosemaling, knifemaking, woodworking, and weaving.

The new building's first floor has floor-to-ceiling windows and is topped with a wooden canopy that extends over the street, while the upper floors were clad in grey brick.

The studio created the canopy's soaring form based on traditional Norwegian boat design.

A glass volume that spans the two upper floors was inserted off-centre, facing the street.

The lobby, which is an open circulation area and gallery, features a wooden oculus at the centre that extends into the second-floor galleries, where it stretches several feet high and is wrapped in black wood.

The circular form of the extension calls is a reference to the Lavvu tents of the indigenous Saami people of Norway.

A terrace on the second floor looks out over the adjoining outdoor spaces and Heritage Park, a forested area which contains newly established greenspace and an assortment of historic immigrant-built buildings brought to the site from across the upper midwest region.

The building's third floor contains offices and a digital workspace.

The structure was built using a mass-timber frame fabricated in Minnesota, while locally sourced brick and concrete were used throughout the rest of building.

"The Commons extends a long tradition of using local materials to give shape to the life and culture of Decorah," said the team.

The Vesterheim Commons and Heritage Park extension is part of Snøhetta's 2019 master plan for the development of the campus.

Other public projects by Snøhetta include plans for a library in Charlotte with a "translucent prow" and a spiralling planetarium in France

The photography is by Michael Grimm.

Project credits:

Client: Vesterheim, National Norwegian-American Museum, and Folk Art SchoolDesign architect and landscape architect: SnøhettaArchitect of record: BNIMGeneral contractor: McGoughLandscape contractor: 2nd NatureCost consultant: Directional LogicStructural engineer: Fast + Epp / MBJ EngineersMEP & lighting engineer: Morrissey EngineeringCivil engineer: Erdman EngineeringAcoustics engineer: ARUPSustainability consultant: Atelier 10Heritage Park Phase I landscape architect: Damon FarberMass timber fabricator: Bell Structural SolutionsBrick fabricator: Glen-Gery BrickMason: Berger MasonryConcrete fabricator: Wicks ConstructionEntry Sign woodworker: Jock HolmenPhotographer: Michael GrimmVesterheim curtain wall contractor: W.L. HallGlass & custom frit: Agnora

Photo courtesy of Hanna Leena Thim. (Larger image)

AMES, Iowa – Fish farming is a crucial industry in Norway, and salmon is by far the most important species. So it’s alarming that bacterial diseases are on the rise at the massive sea farms where salmon are raised.

To help explain why, the country’s top veterinary research center is turning to Mark Lyte, a professor of veterinary microbiology and preventive medicine and the W. Eugene Lloyd Chair in Toxicology at Iowa State University. His theory? The salmon are stressed out.

Norwegian salmon farmers once heavily used antibiotics and other medicines. But their disease control efforts now rely largely on vaccines and physically delousing the fish, a handling practice that has become more common in recent years as sea lice – a crustacean salmon parasite – have become resistant to chemical treatments. Physical delousing methods include brushing lice off the scales of salmon and exposing the cold-water fish to warm water.

“All of that is surely very stressful to the fish. Imagine if you were parboiled for a while. You wouldn't like it. And then we ask, ‘What is part of the stress response?’ Neurochemicals,” Lyte said.

Those neurochemicals – “fight or flight” stress hormones such as norepinephrine and epinephrine – prompt physical reactions such as an increased heart rate and blood sugar levels, preparing an animal to act. But that stimulation can extend beyond the stressed animal.

Lyte pioneered microbial endocrinology, a research field that combines microbiology and neurobiology to study the interactions between microorganisms, animals and plants – many of which produce and respond to the same neurochemicals. One of his discoveries revealed how hormones produced by a stressful condition could lead to deadly infections by acting as an environmental signal to bacteria, causing them to proliferate and attach to host tissue long before the host’s immune system realizes they are there. Recognizing and responding to a host’s stress response enables pathogens to evade immune systems and ultimately cause disease.

That’s what Lyte and researchers from the Norwegian Veterinary Institute (NVI) suspect may be happening at Norway’s salmon farms. Stress hormones produced by the fish could be promoting bacterial growth, leading to increased infections.

Lyte first showed more than 30 years ago that bacteria can respond to neurochemicals involved in the stress response. Knowing that stress hormones can turbocharge bacterial growth was instrumental in finally understanding why hospital patients who receive synthetic forms of stress hormones to boost their heart and kidney function can develop life-threatening infections.

He developed the theory of microbial endocrinology after years of researching the ability of stress to suppress the immune system. He found that from an evolutionary perspective, it didn’t make sense for acute stress to suppress a host’s immune system.

“Two animals fight and bite each other. The skin of one animal is punctured, allowing bacteria get in. At that point, why would it be in the best interest for the stressed animal with the puncture to have its immune system suppressed and not fight off the bacteria in the wound? Obviously, evolution would not have selected for that to happen,” he said. “Instead, the animal’s immune system would gear up to fight off potential invaders. So stress may be good for the immune response, initially, when an animal is faced with a challenge.”

The trouble is bacteria also want to survive. That’s why infections can ramp up even in the face of a heightened immune response. The bacteria sense the stress hormones as an environmental signal to start growing faster and adhering to surfaces to make biofilms, which enable the bacteria to fend off attacks from immune cells and antibiotics given to treat the infection.

“Dealing with the stress response is nothing new to these bugs. They've seen these neurochemicals before fish and other animals ever existed, and they change their physiology to survive,” Lyte said.

Research into how microorganisms interact and impact host animals is rapidly expanding, but much remains unknown. For instance, Lyte said, scientists discovered in the 1940s that a probiotic common in yogurt, lactobacillus, produces large amounts of gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is a major neurotransmitter in animal brains.

“Decades later, it’s still unclear why,” he said. “It’s not just for the heck of it. They're doing it for a reason.”

Lyte’s research team is partnering with the NVI on a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the Research Council of Norway, the first collaboration between the two institutions. The researchers hope to establish whether stress hormones are making farmed salmon more susceptible to bacterial disease, which costs the industry an estimated $100 million per year.

The outbreaks involve numerous pathogens, both reemerging and new concerns, but there’s no indication of any decisive genetic changes in the bacteria or the fish, which are bred for disease resistance. The environment in the sea cages, including the water temperature, has remained steady. However, the spike in disease rates in recent years coincides with the steep rise in physical delousing, and symptoms often appear shortly after the treatments, which can be conducted as frequently as every month during the summer, said Dr. Snorre Gulla, a senior researcher at NVI.

Starting in July, Lyte will travel to Norway to meet and train Norwegian researchers, who will later visit his lab in Ames. The research will involve exposing fish-associated bacteria to stress hormones in a lab and to stressed fish in water. The team also aims to develop tools for monitoring stress hormone levels in salmon stocks.

“Our overall ambition is to create new knowledge and increased understanding of important bacterial diseases in Norwegian aquaculture through unravelling whether microbial endocrinological processes are important facilitators of bacterial diseases in fish. This can hopefully lead to better mitigation strategies,” Gulla said.

Connecting the salmon disease outbreak to stress hormones also would be another step in Lyte’s efforts to show the infectious interaction in a variety of animal species.

“If you can prove this across an evolutionary spectrum, you have a better understanding of how it works in humans,” he said.

Mark Lyte, Veterinary Microbiology and Preventive Medicine, [email protected], 515-294-5957

Dave Roepke, ISU News Service, [email protected], 515-294-4845

An Iowa State University professor who pioneered the study of how stress hormones can directly stimulate pathogen growth will work with Norwegian researchers over the next three years to see if intensive handling methods are making farmed salmon more susceptible to bacterial diseases.

“Dealing with the stress response is nothing new to these bugs. They've seen these neurochemicals before fish and other animals ever existed, and they change their physiology to survive.”

Mark Lyte, professor of veterinary microbiology and preventive medicine and W. Eugene Lloyd Chair in Toxicology

It was a simple question that didn’t make sense.

Natalie Wimberley wanted to know how the daily drop-off worked at her sons’ new school in Bodø, Norway when they moved there for her husband’s work about 10 years ago.

Where and when parents drive up is important in the United States. Not so in Bodø.

No one drives to school, locals explained when they finally figured out what she was asking. You walk or ski, they told her.

The family “came to love the culture and the people” during the 2½ years they lived there, she said. When it was time to return to the United States, the similarities between Bodø and Gig Harbor drew them to the area.

Now Wimberley is vice president of the Peninsula School Board, and she’s traveling back to Norway with other local leaders as part of an effort to start sister city relationships between Gig Harbor and Bodø, and with Bra?, Croatia.

One person trying to start those relationships is former Rotary Club of Gig Harbor North president Bob Anderson. He and others have been trying for a couple years, and their goal is to have the relationships formalized this year.

That takes agreements between the mayors, and sometimes approval by city councils, Anderson said.

They chose Bodø as a potential sister city in part because of Wimberley’s ties there. Lise Kristiansen, he said, has been critical in the effort. She lives in Gig Harbor, serves as Norway’s honorary consul in Alaska and has family ties in Bodø.

They chose the island of Bra? in Croatia, Anderson said, because the head of the Harbor History Museum connected them with a man who has local ties and plans to travel from Croatia to Gig Harbor this summer to work on a boat-building project.

“There’s a high Norwegian population in Washington state and a lot of people with Norwegian affiliations in the Gig Harbor area,” Anderson said, as well as “a very large Croatian contingent in Gig Harbor.”

The local sister cities team had about 200 people attend a Norwegian heritage day event in December, and they’re planning one celebrating Croatia.

Anderson said the goal is for everyone in Gig Harbor to consider their heritage, not just those with ties to Norway and Croatia.

Gig Harbor had a sister city in Japan in 2002, but the relationship didn’t last after those who started it moved away. Anderson believes having local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs behind the effort this time will make it stronger.

He’s done it before. A sister city relationship he helped start between Newton, Iowa and Smila, Ukraine remains strong 30 years later.

“Our differences bring us together,” Anderson said.

Leaders of the potential sister cities have had video calls, but the Norway trip would be the first in-person contact.

Wimberley, Peninsula School District Superintendent Krestin Bahr, Kristiansen, and Jennifer Stiefel (co-founder of Heritage Distilling) are some of those traveling to Norway this week for 10 days as part of the Gig Harbor delegation. They’ll be going to a conference of business leaders called the High North Dialogue, meet with local government officials and tour Norwegian schools. Wimberley said the school district is paying the way for Bahr and her, and that some in the delegation are individually funding their participation.

Wimberley wants to study the Norwegian school system and look into bringing some of those ideas to Gig Harbor.

Her sons were in elementary school and preschool when they lived in Bodø from 2011-13. Her husband is a retired U.S. Air Force officer who was stationed to fly with the Royal Norwegian Air Force.

There’s a strong focus on the outdoors in the early years of the Norwegian education system, she said, and everyone is in preschool from the ages of 1 to 6.

The kids learn confidence and teamwork. They forage for mushrooms outside, make mint tea and learn about hunting and how to prepare the food they gather. They learn how to dress for the outdoors and how to solve problems as a group.

“So much focus on the world around them,” she said. “… They’re resourceful and confident.”

She ran into her son’s class one day while she was out skiing.

Norwegian students have the same teacher and classmates for grades one, two and three. While the teacher changes for the next two years, their classmates stay the same.

They don’t start standardized testing until third grade.

Norwegian educators, she said, have expressed interest in learning how Gig Harbor students make the transition from free-play learning to a more traditional education setting where they’re sitting in a classroom.

Voyager Elementary School has connected with an elementary school overseas about getting students in touch, maybe through letter writing, Wimberley said.

She also thinks it could be fun to do a soccer game between the cities and maybe a youth camp. Bodø has a club.

Anderson said the important thing is to create person-to-person relationships. That’s good for peace and for economic development, he said.

He’s the former lieutenant governor of Iowa and was a state representative there, though he’s not quick to mention that.

Talking about why sister cities mater, he’s more likely to talk about the time he helped bring people from Russia and Ukraine to Iowa in the ‘80s, and formed a relationship with a collective farm in Ukraine.

“Lots of international work in Iowa sort of led me to understand the benefits of sister cities or various kinds of international partnerships,” he said. “… To have those personal contacts globally and to have continued them over all this time has been very important to me personally.”

Jane Ann Cotton, chair of Newton’s sister cities board, said Anderson is the reason Newton has a sister city in Ukraine.

“I think it expands other folks’ awareness of the way other people live and maybe some of the challenges that they’ve had to go through,” she said.

It was special, she said, that they had guests from Ukraine when the country declared its independence in 1991. One of the sister city projects at the time was to send medical equipment and personnel to Smila.

Today, Newton is organizing nonperishable food, medication and clothing, among other supplies, to send to support their sister city during the war.

“It’s really quite heartbreaking for all of us that have had close relationships with them over the years,” she said. “… Our local newspaper has really done a great job in covering this and personalizing it and putting really important information that we received from the students since it all started, the change in their lives.”

A recent front page featured Ukrainian colors of blue and gold to raise awareness, she said.

“I work with a particular teacher in Ukraine at a particular school, and over the years we have gotten very close,” she said. “It’s just been so difficult.”

Many locals who have hosted Ukrainian students have been in touch with them, she said.

“You always feel like it’s your own son or daughter by the time they leave, when they’ve been with you an entire school year,” she said.

Her own “Ukrainian daughter” now lives in Florida and is hosting four or five Ukrainians who were able to get visas.

She noted that Anderson took farm kids to Ukraine as part of his work with the Iowa Peace Institute.

One of the Iowa kids on the youth agriculture trip grew up to become U.S. Senator Joni Ernst.

“In fact, she just returned, she led a delegation to go to Poland, and took other senators, so they could see for themselves about the refugees and what has happened there.”

Wimberley said Bodø’s mayor has been asked to welcome 350 Ukrainian refugees and agreed. Maybe there are ways for Gig Harbor to help the city do that, she said.

When the delegation returns, the Gig Harbor City Council plans to discuss the potential sister city relationships at a study session April 28.

“It does have to be approved by council,” Mayor Tracie Markley said.

She’s supportive, she said, and has spoken with the other mayors.

Bodø, she pointed out, has a youth council. She’d like to see some sort of youth government like that in Gig Harbor.

Markley, like Anderson, hopes to have the relationships finalized by the end of the year.

The idea, she said, is “getting to know each other and making the world a little smaller.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2022, 5:00 AM.