2024 Høst

The studio course series investigates how climate change and its many connected crises will demand radically different futures, and how these will require an equally radical restructuring of our societies and not least our professions. Climate change is the greatest threat humanity is facing. Yet, other crises like wars, repression, political instability, and growing economic disparities are often given priority. But these crises are not separate. At their core they all connect to how we distribute and consume resources and how our societies are currently locked into extractive growth models, overshadowing environmental and social concerns. The course explores transitional strategies such as degrowth as solutions, challenging the narrative that such approaches would lead to societal collapse.

Each year, this studio course series engages students in using interdisciplinary approaches to provide strategies and designing concrete interventions for post-growth development. The studio works across diverse contexts, from the Nordic to the global, each with its unique set of challenges.

This semester, we will be envisioning a climate altered post-growth future in Ukraine, in collaboration with the Kharkiv School of Architecture, focusing on Lviv and the Levandivka, Pryvokzalna, and Klepariv districts. With the ongoing war, Ukraine is faced most acutely with humanitarian suffering and destruction of built and natural environments. Through the lens of post-growth, you will investigate whether the devastation of the war can be used as a starting point to foster a transition society, critically reassessing the way we build communities, how we live in them, use environments, and interact with landscapes. Levandivka, Pryvokzalna, and Klepariv are characterised by housing, as well as disbanded railway infrastructure and production plants. In an uncertain future, localised production and distribution can help foster resilience. But this needs to happen in ways that build on climactic, ecological, and social stability.

Climate change requires that we take our skills beyond business-as-usual models, reclaiming the future through new ways of living on a damaged planet. What can we bring with us into the future in terms of spatial practices, cultural heritage, social norms, and structures, what will be left behind, what will have to be different, and how will it all need to be reassembled? Through your education at AHO you are trained to envision things that are not yet. You are trained to be expert storytellers, dreaming up bold new possibilities, providing hope within an increasingly limited future. We will explore spatial strategies to foster a transitional society and visualise what these may look like. Can radical realities be envisioned that are acceptable to people who are concerned with immediate needs? What options do we have when we must respond to inevitable climate change? Despite slow action, there is agreement in government, municipal, and private sectors that climate change and its complexity demand increased climate preparedness and more interdisciplinary solutions. This means that we need to work together across fields and geographies through strategic processes to suggest real life interventions that matter. This course will provide you with concrete tools, ways of thinking, and deliverables to take on such tasks.

Body and Space Morphologies (B&SM) is a research-based teaching program in the Building Art department. Dedicated to Phenomenology in Architecture, the program offers Trans-Disciplinary master studios in explorative – architectural, pre-architectural and post-architectural - making, sensing and thinking.

We aim at preparing and enabling students to conduct their own interest driven investigation into Architectural Phenomenology understood as Research Creation; a working mode creating an inspired, process focused and reflective Material Practice. We consider this to be the Artistic Parallel to both Traditional Scholarly Research and Common Architectural Design Practice.

Based on performativity and affordance theories, performance and performance studies, disability and neurodiversity studies as well as phenomenology and perception theories, the B&SM Studio Works investigate primal and/or prearchitectural material/processes/phenomena/conditions and develop or perform a series of experienced distinct objects that behave relational, that inspire imagination, that provide new knowledge, strong architectural interests and/or architectural narratives or identities.

2023 marked the start of the second cycle of the B&SM course series - structured into spring and autumn modules:

• The spring semesters - a series of courses on Acting and The Collective in a More-Than-Human World - are dedicated to the topic on Animism in Architecture - studied and worked through a discourse on the various ideas, movements and awareness created in current ecoperformance, ecopoetic, ethnopoetic and ethnofiction works.

•  The autumn semesters - a series of courses on Acting and The Acted in a More-Than-Human World - investigate actual Ecoperformance in Architecture studied and worked through a discursive design practice that seeks to establish porous architectural infrastructures which understand environment and body as inseparable dimensions of performative creation

 The fall 2024 semester works on Ecoperformance in Architecture through a focus set on Vessels & Crafts:

Ecoperformance understands environment and body as inseparable dimensions of performative creation. In an ecoperformance, the environment constitutes a living and interactive play of presences and forces. The performer is not the central agent, but one of the play’s components. At the same time as an ecoperformance experiments with environmental interactions as a performative event, it configures itself an environmental process. Ecoperformance can take place in any landscape, natural or urban, and may, among other possibilities, question, honor and reaffirm human being/environment interconnections. It may serve to raise the awareness of the harmful environmental impact of human actions, and, eventually, become a vehicle of political denunciation.

What is Ecoperformance? – retrieved from https://www.ecoperformance.art.br/about-ecoperformance

This semester, the Transformation in Practice Studio will focus on the densification of small cities by proposing an apartment block for a historic centre in rural Norway.

Different from European cities, small town centres in rural Norway lack the long urban tradition found on the continent. Often related to the emergence of industry or proximity to waterways, small towns appear as stations along the railway, at the intersection between highways, or nodes between trading routes. Towns frequently grew around clusters of farms in advantageous locations, which are now embedded into the urban fabric like relics of the past. Large farms took on the role of uniform and well-established town centres in Europe, where the type and expression often seamlessly incorporate new developments through strict control.

On the other hand, Norway looks more like the Wild West, a free-for-all version of the US, defined by sprawl, sudden densification, and a variety of facade expressions. Through the advent of industry in the 19th century, these town centres developed rapidly and with little planning. In postwar Norway, increased wealth further accelerated this expansion, and the few pockets of urban fabric established as a homogenous type in the late 19th century or early 20th century were often partly demolished and replaced by modernist structures. Combined with car-based town planning, the market-liberalist and developer-led policies of the last 40 years has led to places that struggle with fragmented scales of buildings and undefined urban spaces. The architecture is a hotchpotch mix. At best, there is a richness in its diversity, but too often, it is defined by low cost and poor-quality housing.

These developments starkly contrast sustainability strategies for increasing density by adding residential units within already built-up areas to diminish the need for cars, reduce CO2 emissions, and protect green spaces in urban environments. Current governmental planning policies advocate for the so-called knutepunktfortetting to breathe life into small-town city centres for greener and more sustainable living. The aim is to make efficient urban knots that bind together commercial infrastructure and housing with short distances between daily functions and synergies that reduce carbon footprint. Meanwhile, in the familiar terms of planning regulations, buildings should be 'in keeping'. Pitched roofs, dormer windows, and variations in the façade are prescribed qualities that, once scaled up, will test the line between fitting in and standing out. Traditional timber town city centres were dominated by domestic types adapted to become commercial buildings, leaving few precedents for the scale of construction needed.

The question of scale and translation is central. It often needs to be clarified whether a small town can absorb a big building, and if so, what characteristics it should take on. Nevertheless, there is precedence for large timber buildings in Norway, and the resurgence of timber as a sustainable construction material makes them pertinent case studies to revisit. At the end of the 19th century, trade centres like Arendal were small cities that required functions that greatly exceeded the construction possibilities of a single log. Local architects pushed the technology of the notched log and designed timber megastructures. The scale of these buildings prompted translations of buildings on the continent. Sand mixed with paint translated timber into stone. With little precedent locally, new building types that now seem perfectly integrated into the city were designed. We will again have to break new ground in places like this, and precedent must be found far and near.

Working within this context, the studio will ask the following questions:

What does it mean to design contextually in our times?

How do we design urban scale housing in a historical and non-urban context?

The output of the studio will consist of well resolved projects with distinctive formal qualities built on clear intentions. In groups students will be assigned a site in a historic town centre within a radius of 150 km of Oslo. The sites will be assigned according to certain common parameters of size, history, type of urban fabric and zoning plans that advocate further densification. The students will visit local planning offices, understand the development plans, and design a residential building within that plan. Depending on the site, projects will engage with the transformation, connection and extension of existing buildings, as well the design of autonomous new additions. Ideally, projects will include a mix of apartments and commercial spaces.

Through sampling existing qualities in the built environment, the proposals should aim to have an expression that speaks to and with the place without falling for the pastiche or romantism. The translation of material and form transcends the classifications of new and old, modern, and traditional. Plurality in building and the metamorphosis of one material into another is almost as old as construction itself.

The relationship between façade and plan will be essential. The conflict between cost, contemporary technical requirements and traditional features will be explored. Sustainable construction will be key, from the reuse of existing structures to the use of contemporary timber technology. Just like older buildings cannibalized their own through the reuse of elements and parts, the proposals will actively work with the repurposing of recycled elements.

The ACDL studio is part of a series running since 2014, placing a strong emphasis on computational tools as part of the design process and communication of ideas. The studio is research and practice based, with an experimental approach to environmentally-conscious architectural design, design processes and methodologies. Through a series of engaging lectures students will delve into the intersection of computation and architecture to develop innovative design solutions for the built environment. Artificial intelligence in concept development will be investigated and included in critical discussions.

The project assignment:

Design a cutting-edge Headquarters (HQ) building that establishes a strong presence within the cityscape. The project should  integrate sustainable principles, new materials, and technology in a suitable and innovative manner.

The HQ building should feature a spacious entrance lobby open towards the public ground. The office spaces should be designed with flexible layouts to accommodate evolving work styles and technological advancements and promote collaboration and innovation. Aim to create diverse workspaces, with a focus on healthy, environmentally friendly work environments.

The building must be accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities,

by incorporating universal design principles.

The program should also integrate shared or rentable areas for mixed-use purposes. Ensure the building accommodates future office needs while also incorporating spaces for retail, cafes, and community facilities to enhance urban connections.

Explore mixed-use opportunities to promote diverse activities and interactions, fostering community engagement and urban vitality.

The project should include outdoor areas and roof terraces that serve as dynamic extensions of the workplace, offering opportunities for relaxation, collaboration, and social interaction.

The project is  to be developed through an iterative process of analysis, simulations and design generation, refining spatial organization, building program, comfort zones and activity distribution.

Central themes for the studio are performance oriented; site specific climate analysis as part of the research and basis for design, - and various simulations to analyze and optimize design and performance as part of the architectural design process. Parametric computational modeling will be introduced, and used in an iterative manner incorporating design generation and analysis to refine the associative model that defines spatial organization, required building program and activity distribution.

Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on the iterative design process, encouraging students to experiment with computational tools and analog techniques to iteratively refine their architectural proposals. By fostering a collaborative studio environment, participants will have the opportunity to exchange ideas, critique each other's work, and push the boundaries of design innovation.