Through archival studies, dissemination and exhibition curating, the course will provide a structure for understanding the development of Norwegian architecture in the post war period, when the Norwegian welfare state was constituted. A high building activity included numerous built and unrealized architectural ideas and projects, related to among other things, housing reforms that provided higher standards for most people, new typologies for agricultural and industrial development in rural districts, and the need of new institutional buildings locally throughout Norway as well as in the Global South, as part of the country´s aid agreements with newly liberated nations. Architects took, and were given important roles in a way in which is hard to find in earlier or later period. Based on existing research,  publications and new archival studies, the aim of the course is to unveil undiscovered or forgotten architects, projects or ideas of the period, and to add new layers of knowledge to its historiography.

Students in the elective this spring will especially search for and engage with archival materials related to the so far under communicated histories of female architects taking part in the reconstruction of Northern Norway after WW II (access to analogue archives is depending on the C-19 restrictions). Students will make up a team of curators, and develop concepts for an exhibition, solutions for how to disseminate and communicate their findings, and produce every task for an exhibition production, such as exhibition design, deposits, installations, models or panels, and texts in different genres, e.g introductory texts, catalogue essays and labels. The research will be contextualised by lectures or seminars that provide an account of the cultural, political and architectural histories and theories, as well as curation, dissemination and exhibiting architecture.