IDE + IA in close collaboration with Comte Bureau and OBOS Living lab -  A cross disciplinary exercise to redefine the housing typology in Oslo.

We all have experience of what it means to live in an apartment; a horizontally arranged dwelling with a number of rooms serving different purposes – sleeping, cooking, and so on. 

Buildings are built for people, and by people. The studio wants to explore in greater depth what it means to live in an apartment and how decisions makers, developers, architects and designers can develop buildings more fitted to the needs of users today. How we by combining tools and methods available from social sciences, service design and architecture, can go deeper into routines and use of today’s households. 

In the 1930s Oslo municipality gathered a research group consisting of architects, engineers and sociologists to work together to improve the housing offered in Oslo. The (urban) housing typologies we see in Oslo today, are partially the result of their work.  

In 2020 the challenges are different. Family structures, consumption patterns, technology, the way we work, the way we eat — in general the way we live our lives, and how we share them — have changed. At the same time, it’s been a rising awareness of sustainable living, especially in urban areas. Why haven’t the housing typologies changed to answer this? 

In this course students will investigate how people “do” living today (this will be in the specific context of urban Oslo), and design the living of tomorrow. The course will investigate questions such as: How can housing be design based on people's needs? How can housing be designed to enable more sustainable living? How can we design housing as a service of living?

Based on this, the course will be delivered in partnership with OBOS and their unit OBOS Living lab (OLL), an experimental living arena that tests hypotheses on solutions that can enable quality in affordable living. It will have a focus on broader themes defined by OLL in close collaboration with AHO and the two institutes involved. In this context we will try to understand, design and test solutions based on human behavior These broad themes are: sustainability, flexibility, sense of community, sharing/privacy, integration. These might be approached on a broader level or be focused on specific questions, for example: how do we design for shared facilities/spaces or focused on challenges and opportunities such as how do we design for better on ground floor living experiences.

The challenges posed by contemporary global culture are far too complex, wide-ranging and interconnected to be solved by one design field alone. Instead they require cross-disciplinary problem solvers from allied disciplines to collaborate to craft a new way of thinking and working. In this course we therefore wish to enable architecture and design students to work as a team. Therefore, the course will also be run together with Comte Bureau who is a leading actor in developing projects merging design and architectural competences. 

Students will explore a cross-disciplinary, user-based working process and methodology. Involving, defining needs of target groups and translating needs into solutions, and finally methodology for testing them. All aspects that influence the way we live, such as service systems, culture, energy, food, social, technology, economy etc. will be taken in consideration.

Students will be expected to deliver an account of their process relating to insight and research phase as well as solutions that address target group needs. This could be in the form of models, service offerings or large-scale prototypes. However, this is not prescriptive and solutions will be judged on how well they address target group needs whilst reflecting the competencies of the cross-disciplinary teams involved.