When Magnus Widerøe founded Studio Wideroe at the end of 2024, it was driven by a desire to challenge one of the most resource-intensive industries of our time: the construction industry. Not only by questioning the kind of architecture we build, but also what we build with.

For Widerøe, Larvikite has become a material with particular potential. Not only because of its aesthetic qualities, but because it represents a different way of thinking about architecture, one defined by a deeper understanding of material and a clearer relationship to the resources that already exist.

An encounter with the quarry

Widerøe’s first encounter with Lundhs came through his former professor, Jonathan Foote, who encouraged him to travel to Larvik to experience the stone industry up close. At the time, Widerøe was studying in Aarhus, and the visit to Larvik proved decisive.

Standing in the vast, almost amphitheatre-like quarries, seeing how the stone was extracted and processed, and meeting the people who work with the material every day gave him a new understanding of stone as a building material.

For Widerøe, this experience remains central: it is impossible to fully understand the essence of natural stone without seeing the process behind it. The material does not begin on the drawing board, but in the mountain.

A different time horizon

Larvikite has since taken on a central role in the work of Studio Wideroe. According to Widerøe, this is due both to the material’s inherent qualities and to the industry surrounding it.

He describes Larvikite as an exceptionally durable material — one that can last almost indefinitely. This gives architecture a different kind of responsibility. When shaping something that may carry its form for centuries, a different level of care is required than when working with materials of a shorter lifespan.

It is within this intersection of permanence, precision and aesthetics that Studio Widerøe operates. The goal is not simply to use stone because it is beautiful, but because it possesses the technical, structural and environmental qualities that make it relevant for the architecture of the future.

Surplus material as a resource

A central theme in Widerøe’s work is the reuse of surplus and residual material from the stone industry. Today’s international market for natural stone is largely based on an expectation of homogeneous products: specific colours, patterns, dimensions and surfaces. As a result, large quantities of stone extracted from the mountain never reach the market as finished products.

For Widerøe, this is precisely where significant potential lies.

Larvikite is extracted in large volumes, and parts of the material that do not meet the market’s requirements for surface applications still retain full structural integrity. Rather than seeing this as waste, Studio Wideroe seeks to explore how the material can take on a new role — one it has historically always had: as a load-bearing building material.

This approach offers several benefits at once. It can help reduce waste from the stone industry, replace more carbon-intensive materials such as concrete, and create architecture with an exceptionally long lifespan. At the same time, it allows for an aesthetic that emerges from the material’s own conditions, rather than from standardized market expectations.

From material to architecture

Where many contemporary architectural projects move from concept to material, Studio Wideroe works in the opposite direction. The projects begin in the quarry — with the forms, dimensions and surfaces that already arise through the extraction of stone.

The question then becomes how these blocks can be processed as little as possible, while still realising their greatest architectural potential.

The result is an architecture with a clear pragmatic logic, but for Widerøe, pragmatism alone is not enough. When a material is made to last for centuries, the architecture must also earn that longevity. It must possess qualities that make people want to preserve it.

Studio Widerøe’s work therefore occupies a deliberate balance between the practical and the aesthetic — between resource efficiency, construction and beauty.

Interdisciplinary collaboration as a driving force

The work with Larvikite has been developed in collaboration with several leading professional and research environments, including SINTEF, NGU, NTNU, Lundhs and Larvikittblokka. For Widerøe, this collaboration has been essential.

He believes that architects and designers must work more closely with producers, engineers and geologists. Each discipline holds valuable knowledge, but it is only when this knowledge comes together that the full potential of the material becomes visible.

This interdisciplinary approach is also important to Lundhs, which has worked for generations to develop and refine Norwegian natural stone. When industrial experience, geological insight and architectural exploration are brought together, new opportunities emerge for how Larvikite can be understood and used.

Stone as a load-bearing element

In modern architecture, the role of stone has largely been reduced to the decorative: tiles, façades, surfaces and details. Widerøe wants to bring forward a different understanding of the material — one in which stone once again takes on a load-bearing function.

Historically, stone has been one of our most important building materials. It has carried structures, cities and monuments across generations. With today’s technology, from diamond wire cutting to robotic processing, stone can be shaped with a level of precision that was previously unimaginable. This opens up new architectural possibilities, but it also requires a new way of thinking.

For Studio Widerøe, the future of stone architecture is not about exclusivity, but about permanence. Not about the rare and inaccessible, but about the universal, solid and long-lasting.

In this context, Larvikite can become more than a beautiful material. It can become a link between generations — a material that gives architecture weight, character and time.