Teaching team: Bente Kleven, Bjørn N.Sandaker og Astrid Rhode Wang

The most important issue about making architecture sustainable is to design and build buildings capable to adapt to changing users and programs over time. That is not always the case nowadays. Lots of buildings are being demolished because of lack of adaptability to new users and programs. Practicing architects with their clients should always consider a holistic building design that takes care of durable solutions so that a building can last as long as possible framing the activity of different users to different times. The Multistory buildings course will therefore focus on the architectural potential of various structures as a framework for good architectural spaces with general usability over time. An important aim for the course is to explore, study and play with the architectural potential of the loadbearing structure of a building in terms of materiality, design and how the structure can play an active role in framing good spaces for different use. Another issue is to study and explore is the impact of a building's internal vertical infrastructure with concerns to building structure, multi-story spaces for stairs, lifts and shafts for service and technical equipment. The building envelope do for sure also play an important role for a holistic architectural quality concerning daylight, indoor climate, materiality and how the architecture of a building fits into the actual surroundings. The climate shell will always deal with rough impact due to weather conditions and need special investigation and care in an architectural design process. The first part of the semester will deal with investigation and research of actual structural materials and configuration of loadbearing elements for multistory buildings. These studies will include interesting historical examples, projects from architectural competitions and student projects. The students will also investigate possible structural configurations in physical and digital model studies. The second part of the semester the students will choose an actual plot and further investigate architectural ideas for a holistic multistory building in or near Oslo, and prove through sketches the adaptability for different users and programs (living- , working- and public use spaces). The students have to choose specific topics that their own project will specially concentrate on.