AHO WORKS STUDIES 2011-2012
Studio-Based
AHO links to a third tradition in architectural
education going back to French academies, the
Académie d´architecture
that was established al-
ready in 1671. The Beaux Arts tradition in teach-
ing art was cemented during the 19th century. A
few of the characteristics of this educational
system are interesting to mention even today.
The systemwas based on individual tuition and
not organised in classes. The student chose his
tutor, his master and learned his skills through
repetition and guided knowledge transfer
from the master. Invention was not the task,
but learning the skills and wisdom of classical
architecture. The studies combined the arts
with handicraft skills. The historical line to the
establishment of AHO in 1945 and the edu-
cation of today is definitely tortuous. It leads
through Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole in
Copenhagen opened in 1754 when Norway
was a Danish colony. It takes into account the
profound educational changes of the Academy
in 1924 when the systemwas transferred from
individual studies to an organised class based
education with a curriculum and following a
plan for the studies. Modernism also inflicted
its flavour on the academy tradition. The Bau-
haus established an educational practice where
invention was more important than copying
and rules less important to learn than general
intentional models. Comprehensive approaches
to urbanism was the first theme that widened
the scope of necessary knowledge.
Design, on the other hand, as a profession is
youngandstill extremelyopen in terms of scope,
teaching methods, even in disciplinary
raison
d´être
. In all Scandinavian countries the educa-
tional programs of the discipline evolved out of
the arts and craft tradition—pottery, silver and
other jewellery, textile, typography and furni-
ture, mostly pre-industrial craft traditions that
were deliberately taken care of in protected
institutions andshielded fromdifferent kindsof
industrial nihilism. Teaching industrial design
might also be looked upon as a modernist Bau-
haus invention trying to establish socially rele-
vant craft educations. The role of the industrial
designer was later professionalised during the
post-war European
wirtschaftswunder
and
polished by strong linkages between special-
ised universities and industrial partners, such
as the German Ulm School/Braun industries
scheme. The intention of making these kinds
of connections to Norwegian industries also
brought forward an institute for industrial
design in Norway.
These two major fields of knowledge that
are being developed and taught at AHO arose
separately out of the National College for Arts
and Craft, as architecture in 1967 and design in
1998. Superficially one might think that these
two traditions overlap extensively, insofar as
both are making disciplines that creatively syn-
thesise knowledge from different sciences into
physical form; both are practice driven; and
both qualify one for entering a profession. But
when design was conceptualised as industrial
