Architecture as Instrument / Knut Hamsun Centre
Sound Performance — Friday, 9 October 2026
Venue: Hamsun Centre, Vestfjordveien 1464, 8294 Hamarøy, Norway
What happens when a building is not merely a place for music, but becomes the instrument itself?
Architecture as Instrument / Knut Hamsun Centre is a new site-specific sound work by Gisle Nataas, created following an invitation from the Hamsun Centre and developed through an artist residency at the building in 2026.
Taking Steven Holl’s distinctive architecture at Hamarøy as his point of departure, Nataas uses field recordings, contact microphones and electronic processing to uncover sounds, resonances and vibrations within the building’s materials and spaces. Recordings made during the residency form the sole source material for the new electroacoustic composition.
Steven Holl describes the Hamsun Centre as “Building as a Body: Battleground of Invisible Forces.” In Nataas’ new work, some of these invisible forces are made audible. Concrete, metal, surfaces, reverberation and the building’s vertical organisation become musical material in a composition in which the architecture itself provides the basis for both sound and form.
The audience is invited to listen to the Hamsun Centre in a new way — not only as architecture to be seen and moved through, but as a sonic organism with a voice of its own.
Gisle Nataas is an architect, composer and sound artist. In his ongoing project Architecture as Instrument, he explores architecture as a musical instrument through field recordings, resonance, vibration and electronic processing. The project has been presented in more than 40 concerts and sound installations in cities across Europe, including at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. Nataas studied architecture at the Bergen School of Architecture and the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and is a member of the National Association of Norwegian Architects and the Norwegian Society of Composers. In 2025, he released the LP Architecture as Instrument / Fehn, based on the architecture of Sverre Fehn.
The project is supported by the Norwegian Society of Composers, the Norwegian Composers’ Remuneration Fund and Nordland County Council.
