India, April 4 -- How did the idea of the Future Library project originate?

I commissioned Katie Paterson to do an art project to transform a harbour in Oslo on behalf of property developers. She came to Oslo, did a lot of research and went back to Berlin where she was living at the time. Three days later she called me and said, 'I have the perfect idea for the public spaces project, but I need to stay in a cabin in the forest first.'

I offered her one where she stayed for about a week in the deep forest. Afterwards, she came out and said this is the work: 'It's going to last for 100 years. We're going to grow a forest, design a special room, and commission an author every year until 2114 to write an unpublished and unread manuscript.'...