Norway has a seriously cool new landmark, Europe’s first underwater restaurant that also doubles as a research centre for marine life.
Known simply as Under, the restaurant sits at the southernmost point of the Norwegian coastline and can seat up to 40 diners each night.
Half-sunken into the sea, the underwater restaurant rests directly on the seabed five meters below.
Snohetta comments on their website that with “thick concrete walls lying against the craggy shoreline, the structure is built to withstand pressure and shock from the rugged sea conditions”.
” Like a sunken periscope, the restaurant’s massive window offers a view of the seabed as it changes throughout the seasons and varying weather conditions.”
Snohetta
The fine dining restaurant headed up by Danish expat Nicolai Ellitsgaard has a menu focused around locally-sourced produce.
An equally important part of the project is the building’s facilitation of marine research.
The roughness of the restaurant’s concrete shell will function as an artificial reef for limpets and kelp while Under will welcome research teams studying marine biology and fish behaviour.
Their behaviour will be monitored through cameras and other measurement tools that are installed on and outside the facade of the restaurant.
The goal of the research is to collect data that can be programmed into machine learning tools that monitor the population dynamics of key marine species on a regular basis.
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