Peace Centre in Oslo by David Adjaye

Peace Centre in Oslo by David Adjaye
Norwegians have gone one step further than Nobel's prize for peace and opened what could become a pacifist pilgrimage site for the world: the Nobel Peace Center.

Even bandying the word "peace" around sounds a little like quaint flower-power idealism these days, but translating it into solid form is even more of a stretch.

Can a building create peace?

Or even represent it?

Charged with delivering these high ambitions was British architect David Adjaye, who won a selected competition for the project in 2002.

Adjaye is undoubtedly a rising star in British architecture: young (he's 39), media savvy, forward-looking and personable, he rose to prominence by designing hip townhouses for high-profile clients like Ewan McGregor, photographer Juergen Teller and his artist friend Chris Ofili.

"I don't think we even attempted to try and create peace, or conflict, which are really the dialectic conditions that the Nobel deals with," Adjaye explains in his London office.

"It's an old word, but it kind of has a fresh impetus in our age because we're all a bit concerned with it, but it's very difficult to understand exactly what it means.

It's almost too abstract."

By contrast, the situation on the ground was totally literal.

The city of Oslo effectively donated a building to house the Peace Center, a