Start semester
60 613 Taste of a Territory - Envisioning Architectures of Water within Greater Oslo
Recommended prerequisite knowledge. CAD 2D and 3D, Adobe Suite, GIS. Hand drawing, model making. Interest in the intersections of landscape, urbanism and architecture.
How does a territory taste? We can know by the flavour of its bread, its beers, berries, fish and meat. Local climate, mineral composition, water quality and agricultural practices - and thus the interplay of natural and cultural conditions - join in a fundamental role in generating a region’s savour.
Could taste, and its utilitarian projects, such as breweries, - everyday and ordinary - become a critical vehicle to address, and eventually and steer contemporary urbanisation processes - global and market oriented - in the Oslo Region? Purdy states in his book “After Nature”, that attention to food offers the Anthropocene a picture of humans with their hands in the dirt, engaged in a metabolic bond with what sustains them. Integrating human work into an ecological vision has a broader potential: to refigure the relationship between the natural world and human economy.
It is exactly this relationship which is at stake when addressing the pressing issues of adaption to climate change, urbanisation and place specificness. New imaginaries are necessary to tackle upcoming risks of flooding and draught, rapid land-use change and loss of cultural landscape heritage. Water, the publicness of water works and the omnipresence of the hydrosphere, offer a political and material base to reconfigure that very bond.
In search for visions and with the aim of re-positioning water flows towards a more fundamental role in planning, the studio will explicitly explore how their routing can both be a structuring and a productive element within a socially conceived territory, and envision landscapes, architectures and a series of figures that act within, mark and organize the wider field of territorial flows while, as Gregotti would state, “giving meaning to the whole environment through its stronger characterization and definition”.
Knowledge: The design research studio will provide students with the conceptual categories to address the multi-layered and interrelated issues of sustainability in an urbanised context and a design perspective. Agriculture holds a key position in entangling the human and natural spheres. A focus of the studio will be a hydrological perspective on design, the management of flows within a socially and economically biased context and the anchoring of architectural interventions within the scale of the territory.
- Acquaintance and discussion of notions of cultural landscape, nature, city, territory as a spatial product of cultural, political and economical interests layered in time (palimpsest)
- Basic knowledge of urban metabolism as a concept to describe the flows of the materials and energy between and within cities and landscapes; in particular: urban hydrology and sustainable water management
- Basic knowledge of landscape as a productive, performative layer in human systems: ecological infrastructure and ecosystem services, and regenerative agriculture
- Basic knowledge of concepts of a socially committed practice: environmental justice, commons, everyday urbanism, productive city
- Basic knowledge to a research by design approach, including selection of information, synthesis and organization, problem definition, framing of a task. Creation of strategies and design of a project to be evaluated and critically reflected upon
- Advanced knowledge of design in existing contexts: transformative urbanism, as found
- Knowledge on landscape architectural discourses and methods to give form.
- Knowledge on the landscapes physical form and its change over time by different agents such as climate, water flows, wind and chemicals.
Skills: Concretely, students will develop skills in transforming already built out urban areas under high development pressure from a landscape and hydrological perspective, with the goal to ensure adaptability to climate change and to draw on heritage while continuing to be dynamic. This involves the capacity to conduct a perceptive and layered analysis, a multi-scalar ability to move fluently between territorial and architectural scales in, as well as to frame and argue for a well resolved design proposal.
- Multi-scalar and system thinking: ability to analyze, and synthesise how different systems interact across scales, time and professional spheres, critically reflect on the data that can be processed aesthetically and represented through design.
- Research: Capacity to select and sort, and evaluate data from greater information quantities, ability to conduct precedent analysis and transfer
- Analysis: ability to carry out landscape and urban analysis based on map (GIS) and field (photography, interviews) work; explorations and evaluation towards territorial figures; re-description of a territory through a synthesis of mapping, drawing, diagramming, and photography, with a special attention to hydrological systems.
- Strategy: capability to develop territorial scenarios based on different hydrological and economical approaches, balancing reasons and proposition of concrete designs out of the strategic approach.
- Iterative design process: successive and interrogative usage of drawings (section and plans), physical and digital models, as well as texts variants, to test and develop proposals, in favour for “unsafe”, experimental approaches
- Design resolution: ability to work out a territorial approach on a detailed level, including grading, surfaces and textures, planting, and lighting
- Representation: capability to illustrate design through compelling plans, sections, and 3-dimensional images such as veduta and collage, as well as models
- Communication: skill to verbally and visually argue for a project
General competence:
The studio’s main competence goal is to equip students with the ability to translate ideas into form, and to apply theoretical background in project work. The studio’s underlying thesis will encourage the rethinking of urban, social and environmental challenges as opportunities to develop place-specific, lived and just spaces for the future. Students will develop the adequate background knowledge to frame their projects in a larger socially and environmentally relevant context, as well as to use it as an investigative vehicle to address professional and disciplinary questions.
- Understanding of history and theory in order to inform the design process.
- Understanding and design of the interrelation of different scales: situating a detailed project within a territorial and local level.
- Understanding and tackling of aesthetical questions
Individual and group work (2-3 students) of the studio is organized around 4 phases:
“Appetizer” - Contextualisation: Familiarization with discourse and state of the art in theory and practice: workshops on terminology, concepts, and precedent projects through input lectures, development of tool boxes and prototypical designs; comparative analysis and projection: 10 day off-site (travel requiring) design workshop in Mexico in collaboration with TNT, CCMSS Consejo Civil Mexicano para la Silvicultura Sostenible, UNAM National University of Mexico.
“Cibopolis” - Strategy: Development of strategic transformation scenarios and territorial figures on a watershed scale, based on an in-depth understanding of the geographical context, its problems and potentials. (1: 10.000)
“Brew good, do good” - Project: Elaboration of the design strategies into individual public space, landscape and architectural proposals, understood as a systemic object (1:1000 - 1:20)
“Enjoy” - Communication: Visualization and “telling” the proposals to communicate to a broader audience. Production of an exhibition and studio booklet that can serve to advance the imaginary on Oslo as a sustainable territory.
The studio will travel abroad to Mexico for a 10-day design workshop at the end of February.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annet - spesifiser i kommentarfeltet | Not required | Presence and presenting at 80% of the presentation dates (pin-up and reviews) is mandatory to pass the course. |
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | Individual | Pass / fail | The work will be evaluated through oral and graphic presentations as well as digital hand-ins (moodle/box) at the end of each of the different studio phases, with a final presentation of the whole project’s narrative. Final grade will be based on an assessment of all the hand-ins (portfolio assessment), with an emphasis on design work. Presence and presenting at 80% of the presentation dates (pin-up and reviews) is mandatory to pass the course |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Excursion | The excursion/workshop to Mexico will be end of January, beginning of February. |