The studio is run by the Institute of Architecture and Institute of Design together with Comte Bureau and in collaboration with OBOS as a cross-disciplinary research exercise to rethink housing in Oslo.

In the 1930s Oslo experienced challenges of inadequate and unhealthy living conditions and lack of affordable housing for families. Oslo Municipality gathered a research group consisting of architects, engineers and sociologists to work together to study and improve this housing situation. Post-war housing standards, housing cooperations, homeownership policies and planned communities were further developments of these efforts – a large part of the Oslo population lives in the resulting homes and neighbourhoods today.

In 2022 the challenges are new. An unregulated housing market means that homeownership in Oslo is becoming increasingly inaccessible. Family structures have changed: single households are becoming the norm and many feel lonely. Emerging technologies and new types of services transform our communities, social lives and neighbourhoods. Not to forget the challenges of adjusting the way we live to the new realities of climate change and environmental issues. These new challenges are reasons to rethink housing. 

However, these challenges are far too complex, wide-ranging and interconnected to be addressed by one design field alone. Instead, they require cross-disciplinary problem solvers to work together to craft a new way of thinking and working. Therefore, the course will be run by the Institute of Architecture and Institute of Design together with Comte Bureau, a leading actor in developing projects merging service design and architectural competencies. We will enable architecture and design students to work together as a team and to explore a cross-disciplinary, human-based working process and methodology. The studio research involves defining the needs of target groups, translating those needs into solutions, and finally developing a methodology for testing them.

This exploration will be made in collaboration with OBOS, a housing developer that was fundamental in the post-war efforts towards good, affordable housing. The studio will rethink the broader themes defined by OBOS Living lab; an experimental living arena that aims to enable quality in affordable living today. The studio sets out to investigate how we, by combining tools and methods available from social sciences, service design and architecture may address the many factors that influence the way we live. We will investigate living today and design the living of tomorrow. We will research how decisions makers, developers, architects and designers can develop housing and neighbourhoods more fitted to present-day challenges.