Fantastic Norway AS is an architectural studio founded in 2004 by Håkon Matre Aasarød and Erlend Blakstad Haffner. The initial ambition was to create an open, including and socially aware architectural practice and to re-establish the architect as an active participant and a constructor of society.The studio is engaged with architecture and installations as well as mobilisation processes, development strategies and lecturing. Our clients span from local communities to private investors and public institutions. We primarily work in the field of culture, tourism and commercial building. In addition to traditional commissions we initiate projects ourselves and organize the financial and political anchoring of them.We believe places are stitched together by the stories and lives of people living there. Every client is different; every place is in some way peculiar. We aim to embrace this fact and through dialogue transform it into architecture.Fantastic Norway was proclaimed “Architects of the Year” at the Oscar Hansen Symposium in Bergen/Norway in 2005 and received the “FAD medal of honour” for “best international practice” in Barcelona/Spain in 2007. The office is exhibiting at the international pavilion in Venice at the 2008 architectural biennale. Our headquarters is situated in Oslo/Norway.