About
Founded in Trondheim in 1964.
Founded in Trondheim in 1964, Thommesen Architecture has completed more than 2,800 commissions in 21 countries. Most of them are buildings where a production process sets the premises.
The practice
The office was founded in Trondheim in 1964 and is still owned by the founding family, with the third generation working in it today. Its centre of gravity is buildings governed by a production process. That means seafood processing plants, hatcheries and RAS facilities, dairies, food factories and research buildings. Continuity shows in the client list as well. The practice has designed industrial estates for Siva, the Norwegian state’s industrial development company, since the 1960s, close to three hundred commissions across six decades.
Where the competence came from
The food-industry competence predates the practice. Its founder came from five years as chief architect for Norway’s abattoirs and meat processing plants. Hygienic production was the field from the first day. Close to fifty years of plants for TINE, Norway’s national dairy group, developed that further. So did food factories and research buildings for SINTEF, Scandinavia’s largest independent research organisation. The disciplines are hygienic zoning, washdown-proof construction, and expansion in stages while production runs. Norwegian aquaculture industrialised in the 1990s, and the coastal plants began filleting, portioning and packing for consumers. The same competence moved onto fish.
A record abroad
International deliveries run through the whole history of the office. From the 1970s onward the practice designed facilities abroad through Norwegian equipment and export companies. Among them are a dairy at Wola outside Warsaw and industry in Nigeria. The LNETI research laboratories outside Lisbon followed, contracted under an agreement between the Portuguese and Norwegian states. Today the practice works directly for international clients. The largest is Panfish in Qingdao, 45,000 square metres dimensioned for 40,000 tonnes of salmon a year, brought into production on 4 July 2026.
Milestones
At home, the milestones trace the industrialisation of Norwegian seafood. On the island of Frøya, on the mid-Norwegian coast, the practice has been part of it since SalMar’s first plant in 1996. InnovaMar followed in 2010, and placed SalMar’s head office inside the processing plant. Lerøy Hitra followed in 2019 and InnovaNor in northern Norway in 2021. In the summer of 2026 came Nova Sea and Panfish in Qingdao, two of the practice’s largest facilities, commissioned within weeks of each other.
What sets us apart
Independent advice. Thommesen Architecture earns its fee on design alone. There is no construction arm and no equipment line behind the advice, so the recommendations on suppliers, contractors and technology follow the project’s needs.
Continuity. The architects who prepare the first sketches follow the project to the finished building. Context gained in the feasibility study is still in the room during construction documentation, and decision paths stay short. Many client relationships span decades, each expansion laying the ground for the next.
