Get Started

Image Reveal Effect

White villa reflected in a long pool
A color curtain, a wipe or a slow zoom that uncovers each photo as it scrolls in.
Get Started Now
Documentation
Video guide

See it built,
step by step.

The live demo first, then adding the Image Reveal Effect block to a page and its main settings.
Nordlys Architects · Seattle & Minneapolis

Quiet buildings
for northern light.

An architecture and interior studio of eleven people. We design houses, libraries and workplaces from a short list of materials, and we keep visiting a building until somebody has lived through a winter in it.
View projects
About the studio
64
Buildings completed
2007
Founded in Seattle
Fjordhus, a timber house on the water at Lake Superior
Fjordhus, Lake Superior, 2025
An architect reviewing plans beside white study models
The model room, Ballard
The studio

We work from a former boat workshop in Ballard, Seattle. Every project starts there, at one long table, with paper models and the people who will live in the building.

0

Years in practice

0

Architects & designers

0

National awards

Selected projects

Houses, libraries
and workplaces.

Thirty-one of our sixty-four buildings are homes. The rest are places people share: a library, two schools, offices and a ferry terminal on Puget Sound.
Project archive
Villa Solberg, white volumes around a pool

Villa Solberg

Private house
Bainbridge Island, WA, 2024
Skog cabin, a black timber cabin lit up in the forest

Skog Cabin

Holiday house
Big Island, HI, 2023
Built-in oak joinery with a desk niche

Aker Studio

Workplace interior
Minneapolis, MN, 2025
Fjordhus living room with a full-height window onto snowy pines
Fjordhus — the winter room, looking north
Fjordhus

A summer house that stays open all winter.

One room, one window, one stove. The family asked for a house they could use in January, so we turned the plan towards the north light and kept every wall within reach of the fire.
Location
Bayfield, Wisconsin
Area
2,000 sq ft
Completed
March 2025
Materials
Thermally modified pine, lime plaster, slate
Read the case study

White oak, lime
and slate. That’s it.

We keep a library of samples in the studio and build every palette from it. Fewer materials means fewer joints and less waste. It also means the whole building goes grey at the same speed.
Close-up of pale oak grain
N° 1

White oak

Oiled, never lacquered. Floors, stairs and joinery from one family mill in Pennsylvania.
Lime plaster with combed trowel marks
N° 2

Lime plaster

Hand-troweled and breathable. Paint can’t do what it does with a low sun.
Grey Norwegian slate surface
N° 3

Vermont slate

Quarried in Fair Haven, Vermont. We use it outside and in, often on the same line.
How we work

One team from the first visit to the last snag list.

A spiral oak staircase seen from below
Stair, Ballard Public Library extension
01

Visit

We spend a full day on the site, in whatever weather, before we draw anything. Light, wind and the neighbors decide more than we do.
02

Sketch

Three options, drawn by hand and built as card models. You choose with your hands, not from a render.
03

Detail

Every joint and junction drawn at 1:5. The builder prices the real building, so the budget holds.
04

Build

A partner on site every week until handover, and back again after the first winter.

Fjordhus won the AIA Small Project Award in 2025.

The jury called it “a house that knows exactly how much to say”. We have kept that line on the studio wall.
Fjordhus seen from the water
Fjordhus from the jetty
2025
AIA Small Project Award
Fjordhus
2024
AIA Washington Council Honor Award
Villa Solberg
2023
Wood Design Award, residential
Skog Cabin
2022
AIA Minnesota Honor Award, interiors
Aker Studio
2020
Seattle Design Commission Award
Ballard Library extension
People

Three partners,
eight colleagues.

Every project is led by one of the partners from the first visit to handover. We are hiring a project architect for Minneapolis.
Open positions
Ingrid Halvorsen

Ingrid Halvorsen

Founding partner, architect AIA
Leads the residential work. Grew up on Bainbridge Island and still takes the ferry to the studio.
Mark Lundgren

Mark Lundgren

Partner, interiors
Runs the Minneapolis office and the material library. Trained as a cabinetmaker first.
Paul Ostrander

Paul Ostrander

Senior partner, technical
Thirty years of timber and slate. The reason our budgets hold on site.
The Berg family dining room with a single oak chair
The Berg house, Queen Anne
“They talked us out of a bigger house. Four years on, every room is used every day, and the heating bill is a third of our old condo’s.”
Sarah & Tom Berg
Clients, the Berg house, 2022
Contact

Start with a
site visit.

Tell us where the site is and what you hope to build. The first visit and conversation are free, anywhere in Washington or Minnesota.
studio@nordlysarchitects.com
Book a site visit
Download studio profile
Seattle
5307 Ballard Ave NW
Seattle, WA 98107
(206) 555-0142
Minneapolis
212 N 2nd St, Suite 300
Minneapolis, MN 55401
(612) 555-0178
A dark concrete staircase lit from one side
Studio stair, Ballard Ave

Download Now & Design Without Limits!

Start with the free plugin from WordPress.org. Move to ShapeBlock Pro when you need the extra blocks and modules.

Get Started Free
Buy Now
FAQ

Frequently
Asked Questions

What people usually ask before they buy.
Anything else, write to us.

What is ShapeBlock?
ShapeBlock is a block library for the WordPress block editor. It adds 75+ native blocks with Pro sliders, carousels, grids, tabs, counters, filters and more each with Settings, Layout and Style tabs (plus a shared Advanced tab) and a live preview on the canvas.
No. The blocks are native to the block editor, so there is no page-builder layer and no shortcode is needed for normal use. ShapeBlock does not depend on any other plugin.
Upload the plugin via WordPress Dashboard or FTP and activate it.
WordPress 6.6 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
ShapeBlock is built to stay light. A block’s styles are added only to pages that contain that block, small stylesheets are printed inline instead of as extra requests, and nothing relies on jQuery. Blocks you switch off are never registered at all.
Yes. The ShapeBlock dashboard lists every block with a switch. A disabled block is not registered, so it adds nothing to the editor or to your pages.
Yes. Most spacing, size, alignment and typography controls take a separate value for Desktop, Tablet (up to 1024px) and Mobile (up to 767px). Leave a device empty and it follows the larger screen.
Yes. Blocks render the same in both, and their styles are printed in the page head rather than whenever the theme happens to run.
Not by default. Google Fonts is optional and stays off until you enable it in ShapeBlock → Settings. Video blocks only load YouTube or Vimeo when you add a video link, and share buttons are plain links that do nothing until a visitor clicks them.
Yes. The Theme Builder lets you build headers and footers with blocks and choose where each one appears with display conditions. Reusable templates can be placed anywhere with the shortcode.
Yes. ShapeBlock → Settings can export and import your block settings, colours, layout, templates and Theme Builder templates as a file, so a second site can start from the same setup.

ShapeBlock adds 75+ free and Pro blocks and 14+ modules to the WordPress block editor. Build fast, good-looking pages with native Gutenberg blocks, with no page builder needed.

Useful Links

Our Products

Follow Us

© 2026 ShapeBlock. All rights reserved. A Brand Of ShapeKode

Visa, PayPal, Skrill and Google Pay