fbpx 60 610 Technosphere | Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo

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Start semester

60 610 Technosphere

Studiepoeng: 
24
Full course name in English: 
Technosphere
Emnekode: 
60 610
Studienivå: 
Syklus 2
Undervisningssemester: 
2018 Vår
Eksamenssemester: 
2018 Vår
Undervisningsspråk: 
Engelsk
År: 
2018
Maksimum antall studenter: 
15
Emneansvarlig
Ann-Sofi Rönnskog
Forkunnskapskrav

Passed foundation level courses/ Bachelor. Mandatory for second semester students in Master in Landscape Architecture

Om emnet

We start by asking a simple question: how heavy is a city? How heavy is a landscape?

These are simple questions which reveal a complex figure in the making, a new emerging system composed of human structures, and the social and technical networks, energy and material flux that sustain them. Architecture is considered in its geological connotations: as a mega trace-fossil of humanity with complex geometries and intricate processes of transformations, where local contemporary spatial changes interact with the deep-time processes of the Earth.

This project inquires into the material characterisations of a millenary shift characterising contemporary life on our planet. A new intensification is reshaping relations between the forms of cohabitation and the material structures and processes of the Earth—the Anthropocene.

Architecture links and connects polities and their material spaces of inhabitation. The processes shaping and transforming contemporary life are inscribed directly into forms and processes of material transformation of cities and landscapes, which act as very complex sensors. The project is to intercept these form-generating processes, to reveal them and to guide them: how to shape architectures amidst the multiple rhythms of change that mark contemporaneity?

We work on the spatial transformations in the Anthropocene: with vast areas of the Arctic and Subarctic being transformed into extractive regions for mineral resources, and the densely inhabited regions in southern Scandinavia governing them. The aim of the research design studio is twofold: to measure and characterise the material basis of these processes, and to design ways to augment capacity to respond to their intensifications.

The technosphere is analysed in its dynamic formations: a large and rapidly growing collection of complex objects resting atop and within a vast and growing layer of waste, only minimally recycled back to sustain human life. We focus on the technosphere of Scandinavia and its extractive industry and the metropolitan regions. We inquire into its physical transformations, linking the institutional structures of cohabitation, to the different dynamic processes of accumulation, sedimentation, transformation, assemblage, recycle, abandonment, innovation, decay and waste of the materials that form it.

We articulate new forms of representation and measurement, deploying remote sensing technologies, 3D lidar scans, multi-year Landsat analysis of these intensifications.

Professors in charge

John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog / Territorial Agency

Læringsutbytte

The course provides a critical framework to investigate and evaluate different discourses on architectural, landscape and urban design methodologies, and to articulate an understanding of the implication of the Anthropocene thesis on metropolitan processes.

The studio work provides knowledge and methods on how to formulate independent research questions, and how to formulate complex design in relation to research. The studio work provides knowledge on how to formulate, evaluate and test strategies and comprehensive design options at different levels of detail. The studio provides a specific theoretical and practical knowledge on current methods of digital survey of the material basis of the Anthropocene in relation to metropolitan processes.

Praktisk organisering og arbeidsmåter

The research design studio outlines in detail the material basis of extraction economies in the Arctic and Subarctic regions of Europe, with a focus on Scandinavia and its capital metropolitan areas.

A first phase evaluates methods to represent in volumetric terms the material processes at play: from the material characterisation of the built environment (above and beneath the ground) using remote sensing and in situ surveys, to the larger urban transformations of the landscape of extraction, with an analysis of onshore and offshore elements of the technosphere. The technosphere is here understood as the artificially formed material and energy flows that sustain life.

A second phase of the design research studio interprets the dynamic processes in relation to competing interests and investigates how architectural knowledge can contribute to the formation of a renewed integrated approach to complex environmental challenges. This part of the work is dedicated to fully detailed strategic documents, aimed at addressing specific transformations marked by divergent interests over the same material processes.

This design research studio is a collaboration with the works of Territorial Agency, the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture, London and with the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths. A series of joint seminars and workshops will be organised.

VurderingsformGrupperingKarakterskalaKommentar
VurderingsmappeIndividuellBestått / ikke bestått We assess the studio portfolio with external examiners
Vurderinger:
Vurderingsform:Vurderingsmappe
Gruppering:Individuell
Karakterskala:Bestått / ikke bestått
Kommentar: We assess the studio portfolio with external examiners
AktivitetKommentar
OppmøteWe expect students to attend seminars, tutorials, workshops and trips, and studio lectures
Forventet arbeidsinnsats:
Aktivitet:Oppmøte
Kommentar:We expect students to attend seminars, tutorials, workshops and trips, and studio lectures