For the competition, initiated by the parish of Ulsteinvik and the Church of Norway in the fall of 2015, 38 applications were submitted, of which only four were selected. The small town with a population of just over 5,000 is nevertheless a major shipbuilding center and one of the country's most attractive places to live. Its wooden church, built in the 1800s, has no longer accommodated a large congregation and cannot provide enough space for all the community's activities.
The new church had to be placed next to the old one, having built a diagram of the interaction of the two objects. Snøhetta chose the opposite free edge of the site, so that the cemetery is symbolically placed between the old and new churches. Solid wood was chosen as the main material for the three-storey building; the structures will also be made of wood, but made of laminated veneer lumber. In addition to the main temple space for 520 seats, various auxiliary rooms are provided on the ground floor. The second will house an administrative area with a separate entrance, and a small chapel - on the third.
The project was named Excelsior. The word is of Latin origin and denotes an endless aspiration upward. But from English it can be translated as "wood shavings". The architects themselves name three components of their whimsical concept: Stone, Wood and Space. The stone represents the foundation of the new church, it personifies eternity, corporeality, the past and, finally, the altar - as a meeting place with God. The tree symbolizes growth, creativity, future and sustainable development. To emphasize this, the architects used a layered structure reminiscent of tree rings. The main church space, designed as a kind of cave, as conceived by the authors, denotes the present, life and pilgrimage. Therefore, it is important that it has not only a vertical axis, but also a horizontal one.
