Frida Irene Heldal Stray

I’m Frida Stray, an architect working across architecture, artistic research and critical spatial practice.

I am interested in architecture as a way of looking at the world as much as a way of shaping it. For me, architecture can be a building, but it can also be a drawing, an exhibition, a film, a text, a conversation, a collection of materials, or a way of investigating a place. I enjoy working in the space between these things, where a project does not necessarily begin with the question of what should be built, but with a question about what is already there.

My work often starts with a curiosity about a place, a material or a situation, and develops through research, observation and making. I am interested in the relationships between architecture and the larger systems it is part of, such as geology, ecology, infrastructure, technology, industry, history and politics, but also in the strange, unexpected and sometimes very ordinary things that emerge when these systems meet everyday life.

I like working with subjects that are difficult to contain within a single discipline. I might spend time underground with engineers, trace the history of a material, work with an archive, make a drawing, build an installation, write a text, or use film to look at a space differently. Research is not separate from making in my practice; the two tend to develop alongside each other, with each changing the other.

I trained as an architect at the Bergen School of Architecture, where I completed both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Between the two, I spent a year studying VFX in Berlin, which became an unexpected extension of my architectural education and continues to influence the way I think about image, movement, atmosphere and constructed worlds. Alongside my studies, I have worked as an assistant and freelancer across different kinds of projects and collaborations.

I am drawn to ambitious questions, unfamiliar situations and projects that require finding a method rather than following one. I enjoy moving between conceptual thinking and practical work, and I am happiest when a project allows me to investigate something properly while also making something tangible from that investigation.

At the moment, I am particularly interested in expanding what an architectural practice can be: working through artistic research, exhibitions, spatial projects, writing, moving image and collaboration, while remaining grounded in the discipline of architecture.

I am always looking for new contexts, people and questions to work with.