Commissioned by Olav Olsen upon request from Statsbygg, Snøhetta has designed an expansion of Svalbard’s Global Seed Vault. Way up north, in the permafrost, 1300 kilometers beyond the Arctic Circle, is the home to the world's largest secure seed storage, opened by the Norwegian Government in February 2008. From across the globe, crates of seeds are sent here for safe and secure long-term storage in cold and dry rock vaults. The vault holds the seeds of many tens of thousands of varieties of essential food crops such as beans, wheat and rice. In total, the vault now holds seeds of more than 4000 plant species. The expansion is a service building designed by Snøhetta, intended to facilitate the process of the registration and shipment of the seeds before they are placed securely in the halls of the seed vault.