The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) offers a unique research-based education of international standing. Established in 1945, today it has built a solid national funding base and is prominently ranked internationally. AHO awards three Master’s degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Design, as well as a PhD programme.
In its education, the school follows a studio-based model with a faculty-to-student ratio that encourages individual development and collaboration. The school has approximately 650 students.
AHO offers Master’s degree programmes that are designed to best equip the student to enter directly into professional practice or academia. Within the Master’s programmes, students may specialise in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, industrial design, interaction design, service and systems-oriented design.
The school also offers post-professional Master’s courses in urban studies, system oriented design and architectural conservation. AHO offers a single type of doctoral degree, the Doctor of Philosophy.
The PhD programme is organized as a separate academic and administrative unit. The programme includes approximately 50 PhD candidates who, along with AHO’s established academic staff, do research on artistic and academic problems.
Three institutes—Institute of Architecture, Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, and Institute of Design—organsize the education at AHO. Each Institute has its own research centre that informs and inspires teaching and practice.
As an international school, AHO’s Master’s programmes are taught in English. International students constitute 25% of the Master’s students and 50% of the PhD candidates.
The school boasts of three unique workshops for wood, plastic and metal, alongside a full-scale construction hall, Rapid manufacturing labs, libraries, and the most current IT resources. Studios, data labs, and unstaffed workshops are open to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The international faculty consists of academics and practicing professionals who provide the necessary breadth needed for a contemporary architecture and design education.
AHO is located in the centre of Oslo, at Vulkan, a revitalised industrial area near the Aker River. An innovative, creative and cultural part of the city. The school lays adjacent to the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the recently opened Food Hall.
AHO was established in 1945 initially as a “crisis course” for architects who had seen their education interrupted by World War II. Prior to this, most Norwegian architects were educated at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in Trondheim, a polytechnic school. Throughout the interwar period, many architects had called for a more artistically oriented architectural education, and for an institution based in Oslo, where the most qualified teaching personnel were located. The architecture programme was initially run as part of The Norwegian Arts and Crafts School (SHKS), but in 1962 AHO was established as an independent institution.
The first industrial design programme in Norway, the Institute of Industrial Design, was established at SHKS in 1983. In 1996, the Institute merged with The Oslo School of Architecture. Master of Landscape Architecture became part of AHO’s master’s programmes in 2004. In 2005, The Oslo School of Architecture changed name to The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. In 2009, the Institute of Industrial Design changed its name to the Institute of Design.