Start semester
60 619 Fresh to your door - water and more!
Bachelor in Architecture or Landscape Architecture, CAD 2D and 3D (Rhino), Adobe Suite, hand drawing, analogue model making experience and interest in urbanism and landscape “materials” such as landform, water, soil, plants
Open for:
Landscape architecture - mandatory for 2nd semester master
Architecture
Fresh to your door“ takes the infrastructural back-end of urbanism –the sourcing and distribution of goods and water– to the fore and actively explores its potential spatiality and sociality.
As part of „Oslo Hydropolis“ the studio explores landscape-based, watersensitive urbanism within the Oslo Metropolitan Region.
In face of climate change with its increasing risks of draught and flooding, and continuing urbanisation pressure, the studio proposes a complementary approach to the current paradigm of compact city development –with all its blinds spots such as the relocation of production and commerce into areas „out of sight“.
It engages the functional requirements of adaptation to changing environmental conditions as much as spatial aesthetics and possible everyday practices.
Concretely, the studio will develop a cross-scalar landscape framework as the basis for development. It will re-consider one of the „out of debate“ locations and propose a counter-proposal to the current expansion of a commercial area along the western axis of the Oslo region.
The studio accepts the need of large scale ware houses accelerated by online trade and will propose concepts of how to embed the programme into the wider landscape context, as well to spatially qualify the emerging structures for both non-human and human usage - if not pleasure.
The conviction of the studio is that here –in a context of space-consuming buildings where planning and architecture often fails to pronounce spatial and environmental values– the scope, the frame, the dimensions, the performance, the materials and atmospheres inherent to landscape architecture can provide a long term transformative perspective to urban development.
The methodology of the studio is based on merging planning and design, on oscillating between bird’s eye and eye-level view, as well as on digital and analogue tools.
Knowledge:
The studio will provide students with the conceptual categories to address adaptation to climate change in an urbanising regional context through a landscape architectural perspective. The studio will enter design through the scales of hydrology, and enforce the understanding of landscape as infrastructure as well as a mode of perception. Form will be discussed in relation to performance as well as to space and place.
• Acquaintance of notions of watershed and integrated water management Acquaintance of cultural landscape as a spatial product of geological and climatic forces as well as cultural, political and economical interests and practices layered in time
• Basic knowledge of landscape as a productive, performative layer in human systems: ecological infrastructure, ecosystem services, and regenerative agriculture
Advanced knowledge of form and urban form: application of landscape ecology’s structural concepts to shape spaces and places; landscape pattern
Skills:
Students develop skills to envision urban projects as embedded within cultural landscapes with the goal to ensure adaptability to climate change. Research-driven, multi-layered and multi-scalar in its scope, the studio builds the capacity to conduct a layered and visual analysis of the territorial/ regional context, the ability to reference precedents, to fuse technical and aesthetic aspects of form giving, and finally to frame and argue for a well-resolved design proposal anchored within the scale of the territory.
- 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 analysis based on map work (GIS and morphological analysis) and field work (photography)
- Strategy: capability to develop scenarios for a watershed, development of propositions related to water flows and cycles for concrete case areas
- Iterative design process: trial and error to find adequate solutions, successive and interrogative usage of drawings, plans, sections, physical and digital models, as well as texts variants, to test and develop proposals, in favour for “unsafe” experimental approaches
- Interrogative design: explicit discussion of a formal question, such as grids, patches, edges, corridors or figures organizing a spatial field
- Design resolution: ability to work out a territorial approach on a detailed level, including grading, planting, surface textures
- Representation: capability to illustrate design through compelling plans, sections, as well as digital and physical models and model photography
- Communication: problem definition, framing of a task within the given context of the studio; skill to verbally and visually argue for a project through telling of a compelling narrative
General competence:
The studio’s underlying thesis will encourage the rethinking of urban and environmental challenges as opportunities to develop place-specific and social spaces for the future. The studio’s main competence goal is to equip students with the ability to to frame their projects in a larger socially and environmentally relevant context, state ideas, translate these into form, and to apply theoretical and technical background in project work, as well as to use the project as an investigative vehicle to address professional and disciplinary questions. Both individual and group work will be trained.
Group work (2-3 students) and individual work is organised around 5 phases.
The phases will be supported by input lectures to facilitate familiarization with discourse and workshops to kick-off design.
1. SEARCH 1:1 / 1:50.000/ 1:7500 – Portrait of a Landscape. What is the character of the landscape? How has it evolved? What are its strengths? Where are its vulnerabilities?
• „Journalistic" Research
• Morphological Analysis GIS, CAD Plan 1:50.000 - 1:7500
• Documentary Site Photography
• Tracing of landform, water structure and landuse pattern, hand drawing
• Writing of a story
2. SCENARIO 1:7500 /1:1000 – Development of a Landscape Framework for a logistic park along different scenarios regarding the degree of transformation and political ambition.
• “Transplant” of large scale landscape architectures and agricultural principles of water storage onto the site, „scenario plan" drawing
• Laser-cut “Paper lace" of Landscape Framework
• Physical sketch model with topography, vegetation as mass and void
3. SCENE 1: Eye-level / 1: 100 – Development of the spatial and material qualities of the Landscape Framework through a „Scene“
• Scenographic model photography of a spatial scene with vegetation, ground and water at eye-level
• Detail plan and section of the Landscape Framework 4. SYNTHESIS 1:7500 / 1:2000, 1:1000/ 1:500, 1:100/1:50, 1:20 Elaboration of a detail area of landscape framework as a landscape and architectural proposal with a focus on the public space
• Iteration of „scenario plan"
• Digitally fabricated physical model
• Section, plan of selected space 5. SPREAD the message – Visualization and “telling” the proposals to communicate to a broader audience.
• Oral and visual presentation of project
• Curation and production of an exhibition (AHO works)
• Production of a studio booklet that can serve to advance the imaginary on the Oslo Region as a „Hydropolis“
Excursion: The studio will travel to Bordeaux, France and environments to study public space typologies in urban and rural contexts. Transport, accommodation, and food will be on the expense of students. Entrance fees will eventually be covered by the studio. Those who cannot/do not wish to join the trip will study the visited projects through drawing.
Link to course literature will be registered in Leganto
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Presence required | Required | The building of a body of collective knowledge and the exchange of ideas are essential to the studio. Presence at the studio is required Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. All students will have a desk-crit (in studio or via zoom) of research or design-work at least once a week. New work to discuss is expected for each desk-crit. Presence and discussing work at a minimum of 80% of the desk-crits is mandatory to pass the course. |
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | Group | Pass / fail | The work will be evaluated through oral, model and graphic presentations as well as digital hand-ins at the end of each of the studio phases, and a final presentation with an external assessment committee. The final grade will be based on an assessment of all the hand-ins (Assessment folder), with a strong emphasis on design work (70%). Presence and presenting at 80% of the presentation dates (pin-ups and reviews) is mandatory to pass the course |