2024 Høst

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide students with the opportunity to collect, edit, analyze, and visualize geographic data, either as prerequisite or as an integrated part of project development.

The course will introduce basic concepts and methods in mapping, spatial analysis, and GIS. As a case, the course will explore rural communities in northern parts of Østerdalen with a focus on the study of spatial and non-spatial relationships between the built environment and natural resources. The approach to the study is through cartographic mapping and how maps developed in GIS provide insight and knowledge about the use of GIS to study spatial and local phenomena.

The course will emphasize describing situations today, as well as discussing any development opportunities that potentially can be derived from the mapping and detailed cartographic studies.

The course builds on the elective course Coastal Mapping (www.coastalmapping.no), which studied the fishing industry's footprint on land in northern Norwegian fishing villages in the period 2018-2022.

This seminar explores the full material provenance of the Henie Onstad Art Centre (HOK), located at Høvikodden in Bærum, including building materials, technical infrastructure, furniture, display systems, lighting, maintenance systems, as well as the thousands of art works that has been on display across the decades.

By thorough investigations of the archives at HOK and at other locations, and through on-site surveys of the building, the students will excavate the sourcing, ownership history, production history, economy, usage and alteration records of the components, materials and artworks.

By constructing an alternative history of the building,  this seminar challenges the way we understand and value-assess buildings, and might change the way we transform them for the future. In addition, the seminar aims to provide scenarios for HOKs future development.

Henie Onstad Art Centre was inaugurated in 1968 and designed by the young architects Jon Eikvar and Svein-Erik Engebretsen. It was radical of its time, both in terms of its curatorial ideas and its innovative architecture. Initiated and funded by the figure skater and Hollywood movie star Sonia Henie and her husband, the shipowner Niels Onstad, HOK represented a state-of-the-art cultural institution much inspired by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside of Copenhagen. Based on the personal relationships of HOK’s director Ole Jørgen Moe with people like Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg and Knut W. Jensen, the new center aimed for a new definition of art, showcasing contemporary music, dance, performance, film and photography alongside paintings, drawings and sculpture, engaging its visitors in new ways.

Eikvar and Engebretsen, recent graduates from Statens Arkitektkurs at Statens Håndverk- og Kunstindustriskole (later Oslo School of Architecture) and employees at Nils Holter’s studio, won the competition in 1965 with an innovative scheme influenced by ideas that was circulating at the time. The project development and the building process progressed in line with the radical museum concept, including experimentation with new materials, 1:1 mock-ups, «electronic» site-management and more. Since 1968, the building had been expanded, altered and restored several times, and the art center has gained reputation as one of the leading art institutions in Scandinavia.

The seminar is part of the research project Provenance Projected. Architecture Past and Future in the Era of Circularity led by Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen, and will contribute to a forthcoming book and an exhibition at Henie Onstad Art Centre. Curators and staff at HOK will participate in the course, in addition to artists, historians and faculty at AHO. 

In this seminar students get to work on an exhibition proposal for a museum in northern England that explores the relation between architecture, dress, room and landscape through studying the “attributes” of an amazing seventeenth century noble-woman. The provisional exhibition title is “Lady Anne Clifford: Forensics, Fashion and Ecology” and it will open at the Abbott Hall Museum, Cumbria, UK in Spring 2025. 

In the seminar students will use architectural means – scanning, modelmaking and sectional drawings – to make archival information speak. Anne Clifford moved in life from being a wronged heiress to a powerful political actor, and used dress, representation, building and physical travel to secure her ends. Student work will address the sectional space this endeavour occupied, between the detail of costume, architectural interiors and exteriors and the open landscape.

The seminar aims to combine historical study and architectural technique to increase our awareness of material and ecological links, at scales from the jewel to the region.

The course is carried out in collaboration with Professor Judith Clark, London College of Fashion and Ryan Cook, Intermediate Unit 9, The Architectural Association.

Background:

How daylight enters a room, is essential to our behaviour, well-being and health.  The unique climate of the Nordic hemisphere, characterized by an angle of the sun between 0-10% approximately 35% of the time and cloudy, diffuse light 2/3 of the time necessitates a distinct approach to daylight in architecture on northern latitudes.

In housing projects quantitative methods are predominantly used, and although building regulations are only securing a minimum average percentage of daylight; climate and context are not taken into consideration.  A qualitative approach to working with daylight is mostly discussed in smaller housing projects. There is a need to improve how we assess and work with quality of daylight.  

The objective of the course is therefore to provide students with basic tools and methods to assess both quantity and quality of daylight in the process of Making. Additionally, it aims to bridge the existing gap between technology and the art of building — encouraging students to adopt both a technical and phenomenological approaches to daylight in their work. The course also seeks to enhance students´ competance and awareness of local specificity concerning climate and context, emphasizing the potential of daylight as an essential generator for architectural quality.

In the course we work with both physical and digital models to establish an awareness of precision in the representation of light. We establish a relation between daylight in the scale model, representation of daylight in the digital model and how it is perceived and observed in the already built (1:1).

Each student will individually frame an interest related to the studio project (mastercourse) and build a model 1:20 of parts of the project where methods and tools to assess either quantity or quality of daylight are discussed in drawings, images and models.

The course is structured around research-based teaching methodologies, and students and teachers will actively participate in a collaborative effort spanning Nordic countries, aiming to improve education on daylight within the region.