Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Arkitekter

All three members of JVA (the practice was founded by Einar Jarmund and Håkon Vigsnæs in 1996. Alessandra Kosberg joined in 2004) originally studied at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, whose new building - a paradigmatic edifice that celebrates a carefully calibrated encounter between the existing building and the new structure - they later designed.

The architects' most spectacular project is the Svalbard Science Centre in Longyearbyen, the most northern university and research institute in the world. Here JVA created an unmistakable, crouching, hard-edged structure that, thanks to wind simulations, avoids the accumulation of high snowdrifts around it. The volume rests on tubular steel stilts in order not to heat the permafrost ground, all circulation routes are housed indoors and the entire structure is made of wood and clad in copper to avoid thermal bridges.

The Edge House in Kolbotn, outside Oslo, and the Farm House in Toten, are two recent but very different small houses that highlight the firm's talent for creating small-scale jewels. It was partly on the success of these projects that JVA were one of the architectural practices selected by philosopher Alain de Botton to design a holiday home for a radical new project, Living Architecture. The Dune House, in Suffolk, will be available to rent on a weekly basis from January 2011 (www.living-architecture.co.uk)