Moving Mountains Book Presentation with Carl Fredrik Svenstedt

Carl Fredrik Svenstedt and Head Hi invite you to a presentation of Moving Mountains, a new book featuring the architecture of the Paris based studio specializing in architecture made with stone.

Building in stone implies carving a mountain. The results are imposing and profound, creating a presence with self-evident materiality. With stone extracted from Roman quarries, the resulting buildings occupy a temporality resonant with the landscape. Moving mountains is nonetheless a near Herculean task. It requires teamwork, engagement, and perseverance. It also requires intuition to lead the way. The poetry of a pile of stone is how it embodies an idea or an emotion.

Svenstedt will share with us more about the two main parts of the book. The first part four built projects and their specificity and construction, in each case in some version of solid stone. The second part is meant as a scrap or sketch book, succinctly assembling a number of ideas for projects by the studio that have become, or may or may not become, buildings.

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Carl Fredrik Svenstedt was born in Stockholm and grew up in Montreal. He graduated from Harvard and the Yale School of Architecture and founded his architectural practice in 2000 after working in Paris and New York. Svenstedt teaches architecture at the Versailles School of Architecture (ENSAV). He has taught at the Lille, Villette and Normandy Schools of Architecture, as well as the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, where he was Associate Professor. He has been a visiting Professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City University of New York, at

Middlebury College, and at The Confluence Insititue in Paris, and led an annual workshop at the Münster School of Architecture. He also taught architecture and cinema at the CLCF in Paris. Carl Fredrik Svenstedt holds a World Fishing Record for Siberian Salmon, from Mongolia, certified by the IGFA.

Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architects is a tight-knit team making tailored environments. Their projects are founded in a humanist sensibility, where well-being is a self-evident starting point for architectural innovation. Their work is affirmative, but sensitive to place and experience. Their designs are also based on material, for architecture is about thinking, but also about making. They presented their sustainable European data centers at the 2025 Venice Biennal International Architecture Exhibition. They were named Firm of the Year for Sustainable Architecture 2020 and shortlisted as Architect of the Year 2020 and nominated for the French Equerre d’Argent 2017. The studio was also awarded the French Grand Prix d’Architecture for Construction in Natural Stone in 2017 and 2019, as well as the International Stone Architecture Award in 2014.

Moving Mountains is published by Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing, the Nordic region’s leading international publisher of fine art, architecture, and design. Renowned for its award-winning publications, the house combines meticulous craftsmanship, strong conceptual vision, and global distribution. Its titles are regarded as timeless reference works, found in prestigious museums and bookstores worldwide, celebrated for their exceptional quality and aesthetic precision.

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art, architecture and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events.