Course Program

The studio offers exciting and future oriented design assignments with emphasis on computational design. The aim is to address societal and environmental dynamics through the medium of architectural design.

The studio seeks to address locally specific conditions and circumstances, and societal and environmental changes that require architectural responses that are not part of the current canon and that go beyond current practice.

The fall 2015 semester will focus on locally specific spatial qualities, programmatic (use-related) and environmental criteria as the primary inputs into the design process. Students will be working individually or in small teams.

Phase 01:

Phase 01 will commence with the design of a small building in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The design requires an integrated approach to spatial organization, structural articulation and environmental performance in which the building envelope is the primary element. Phase 01 consists of a six-week design phase for the small building. This phase is integrated with the studios intensive elective course in which students learn and further develop computational design skills.

Phase 02:

Phase 02 consists of two tracks from which students can choose.

Track 01 (recommended for first time takers of the studio) will focus on the detailed development of the small-scale building designed in phase 01 and the preparation of the fabrication and construction documents with emphasis on computer-aided manufacturing.

Track 02 (recommended for returners to the studio) will focus on adapting and developing the design approach towards performative envelopes to a mid- to large size building scheme in Oslo, with the aim to organize an entire building based on the element that divides exterior from interior.

The studio does not pursue a preconceived artistic approach based on a given aesthetic or fixed set of processes. Instead students are encouraged and supported to develop their own artistic approach and position. In so doing the studio pursues design processes from which expression emerges and evolves and foregrounds the design of processes from which individual artistic positions can arise.
Avoiding a preconceived artistic approach is related to the thematic agenda of the studio to develop locally specific and architectures that are embedded in their context based on de-emphasizing the idiosyncratic object and instead complex field relations and architecture / environment interactions.

In order to ensure its practice-oriented emphasis the studio will continue to collaborate with leading architectural and engineering practices, industries, seminal expert groups and research environments, and outstanding schools of architecture.