Architecture is invested with intense cultural significance. Not
only as a matter of functional or economic necessity but as a
vital part of public discourse: a medium by which cultural val-
ue, historical significance, truth, place, and meaning are con-
tested, negotiated, and consolidated. OCCAS sets out to study
such negotiations, looking at how architecture takes part in the
promotion and contestation of cultural value. The centre com-
bines updated theoretical and historiographical perspectives
withmeticulous empirical and archival research. Withmaterial
ranging from objects, buildings, projects, exhibitions, and texts,
to architectural processes, contexts, and landscapes, OCCAS
aims to redefine the contemporary relevance of historical and
theoretical research, emphasizing its critical potential, and its
urgent function in understanding the built environments of the
present and the future. At a time when the man-made environ-
ment is changing at an unprecedented rate, OCCAS studies the
cultural significance of the built world, its historical precondi-
tions and its contemporary status.
The Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies was estab-
lished in 2009. Since its creation it has built up a flourishing
research activity, attracting large research grants and producing
a host of international publications, exhibitions, and conferenc-
es. External research funding has allowed the centre to expand
considerably and today OCCAS encompasses an international
and interdisciplinary community of researchers. OCCAS is the
only Norwegian centre working at a high international level in
this field, and is undoubtedly one of the strongest architectural
research environments in Scandinavia.
Of the multiple arenas where cultural negotiation takes place
through architecture, we see three as particularly crucial due to
the poignant way they tie the built environment into the public
debate. The most overriding of these topics can be described as
the cultural mediation of architecture, i.e. the means and media
Media, heritage, canon
