Vesterheim Commons honored as 2025 American Architecture Award recipient

Vesterheim Commons, the welcoming new addition to the Vesterheim-Norwegian American Museum is the recipient of the 2025 American Architecture Award. The American Architectural Awards, presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, are one the nation’s highest and most prestigious public arts, culture, and educational awards programs that honors new and cutting-edge design in the United States. The project was designed in collaboration with Snohetta + BNIM.

Bringing community members together to experience Norwegian-American traditions, stories, and folk art, Vesterheim Commons creates a warm and inviting new entry sequence tells a powerful story of voyage and arrival. The new addition welcomes visitors to explore Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum‘s campus of 12 historic buildings, home to 33,000+ artifacts, and provides space for public folk art programming for families and students, lectures, banquets, as well as the traveling Annual National Norwegian Folk Art Exhibition.

Photography Courtesy of Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School, in Decorah, Iowa