Start semester
60 615 Acting like Summer, Walking like Rain - Architectures of Water and Weather in Greater Oslo
Emnenavn på Norwegian Bokmål:
Acting like Summer, Walking like Rain - Architectures of Water and Weather in Greater Oslo
Credits:
24
Course code:
60 615
Level of study:
Master
Teaching semester:
2019 Spring
Assessment semester:
2019 Spring
Language of instruction:
English
Year:
2019
Maximum number of students:
24
Person in charge
Sabine Muller
Required prerequisite knowledge
Admission to AHO and successful completion of three years bachelor level studies (180 ECTS).
CAD 2D and 3D (Rhino), Adobe Suite, GIS, animation softwares, hand drawing, model making. Interest and experience in design at the intersections of landscape, urbanism and architecture
Course content
Can weather be made?
Ever since the balancing of seasonal differences and geographical allocation of resources has been the driver of cultural intelligence. The creation of microclimates, through modifications of ground, planting and architectures; prolongations of blooming and growing periods; the harvest, storage, and conservation of resources has led to what we call cultural landscapes and practice. Human societies actively manipulate temperature, humidity and air flow. Societies have specific agency in modifying ecological metabolisms. In this web of dependencies water plays a centre role.
Why should it be made in the Oslo Area?
Historically a water-rich area, weather extremes and so-called seasonal abnormalities question the functionality of cultural landscapes present in the Oslo region. While flooding and its impact on traffic, real estate and water quality in intensively used areas start to be addressed in municipal planning, recently occurring droughts shift attention to water supply and agriculture - and with it to the rather extensively used, wider “support” territory. From a weather perspective, the levelling of peaks is a need and calls for new landscapes and architectures.
Greater Oslo is a growing region. With increasing urbanisation, urban-rural relationships are being redefined, often at the cost of landscape heritage. The need to make weather could be taken as a kick-off to re-imagine the region beyond inevitably short-falling city-nature dichotomies.
The heart of the region is the Oslo Fjord. Urbanisation patterns encircle the Inner Fjord, weather stability is provided by its water body. It is itself a product of a changing climate and whilst retreating to its current form it has left behind the fertile sediments of the ancient sea. The Fjord City is always also an agricultural city.
How to act summer, how to walk rain?
In this context, the studio is a call for the imagination of Greater Oslo as an urban-rural pattern in which weather conditions and the mediation of seasonal disparities are consciously designed. It is a call for architectural corner stones and landscape typologies to frame the fjord and its agricultural hinterland as heart of a weather-active and climate-adaptive urbanity. Taking on the mindset of an agronomist cultivating the land for returning yields, and geared to a wide range of actors and stakeholders, the studio will conceive publicly meaningful places, that stitch an idea of region across the sound.
In search for exploitation of the almost inexhaustible atmospheric and social potentials of water for the enhancement of the urban landscape’s quality, and with the aim of re-positioning the hydrosphere towards a fundamental role in planning, the studio will explicitly explore how weather 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 Vittorio Gregotti would demand, “giving meaning to the whole environment through its stronger characterization and definition”.
Learning outcome
The design and research studio will provide students with the conceptual categories to address the interrelated issues of sustainability in an urbanising regional context. Based on a systemic view on the environment a focus of the studio will be a hydrological perspective on design, and the understanding of landscape as infrastructure. Tied to a performative approach form will be discussed in relation to theories of usage, performance and place.
- Acquaintance and discussion of notions of territory, region, 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 regional urbanisation patterns and visions
- Basic knowledge of urban-regional metabolism as a concept to describe the flows of substances and energy between and within cities and landscapes; in particular: urban hydrology and integrated watershed management
- Basic knowledge of landscape as a productive, performative layer in human systems: ecological infrastructure, ecosystem services, and regenerative agriculture
- Basic knowledge of concepts of a user-centered design practice: “commons”, “everyday urbanism”, “architecture of use”
- Advanced knowledge of form, structure, and texture: Form as “informed” related to processes, both as a passive result of processes, and as an active modifier or catalyst of processes
Concretely, students will develop skills to envision transformation processes of cultural landscapes under development pressure with the goal to ensure adaptability to climate change and to draw on heritage while continuing to be dynamic. Research-driven, multi-layered and multi-scalar in its scope, the studio involves building the capacity to conduct a layered and perceptive analysis of the territorial/ regional context, the ability to reference precedents, to fuse technical, usability and aesthetical aspects of form giving, and finally to frame and argue for a well-resolved design proposal anchored within the scale of the territory.
- Research by design: problem definition, framing of a task within a given context
- 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; description of a territory through a synthesis of mapping, drawing, diagramming, and photography, with a special attention to landscape and urban morphology and hydrological systems
- Strategy: capability to develop territorial scenarios, balancing reasons and proposition of concrete case areas and programmes out of the strategic approach
- Interrogative design: explicit discussion of a formal question, such as grids, lines or points as organizing a spatial field
- Iterative design process: trial and error to find adequate solution, 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
- Representation: capability to illustrate design through compelling plans, sections, and 3-dimensional images such as veduta and collage, as well as physical models
- Communication: skill to verbally and visually argue for a project through telling of a compelling narrative
Working and learning activities
Individual and group work (2-3 students) is organized around 6 phases.
These will be supported by input lectures and readings to facilitate contextualisation and familiarization with discourse and state of the art in theory and practice.
- Mapping: Constructing the context through field and map work, 3 D modelling and research (1:20 000)
- Strategy: Development of strategic transformation scenarios and territorial figures on a watershed scale, based on precedent studies and an in-depth understanding of the geographical context, its problems and potentials. (1: 10.000)
- Workshop Ground work: workshop to understand topography and water flows (as part of excursion)
- Project: Elaboration of the design strategies into individual public space, landscape and architectural proposals, understood as a systemic object (1:1000 - 1:50)
- Workshop Plant work: workshop co-planting (planned)
- 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 the Oslo Region as a sustainable territory.
Curriculum
Excursion: The studio will travel abroad to Mexico City and rural Mexico for a 5-day community-based workshop on sustainable landscape and watershed management in March in collaboration with the universities UNAM, UNSLP, landscape designers TNT and CCMSS Consejo Civil Mexicano para la Silvicultura Sostenible.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Presence required | Required | Presence and discussing work at at least 80% of the desk-crits 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 a strong emphasis on design work (50%). |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Attendance | The building of a body of collective knowledge and the exchange of ideas are essential to the studio. All students are expected to work in the studio, not off-school. Studio days are Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. All students will have a desk-crit of research or design-work at least once a week. New work to discuss is expected for each desk-crit. |