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AHO WORKS STUDIES 2011-2012
Studio-Based
design, this actually meant a farewell to both
arts and craft and an entry into a world of tech-
nologically-, market- and profit-driven indus-
tries. This has further developed at AHO into
an education where the singular, custom-made
or mass-produced artefact is not necessarily
the object for the creative act. The concept of
design is given a new meaning involving in-
vestigating programmes, designing processes,
adapting the potentials of digital technolo-
gy into all kinds of strange fields, even using
design methodology in organisational develop-
ment.Intermsofaneducationalprogrammethis
has brought forward more embryonic and less
academically established specialities like Ser-
vice Design, Systems-Oriented Design and
Interaction Design. What these programmes
have in common is high industrial and social
relevance, giving input to necessary moderni-
sation of industries, trade and not the least in
Norway, public services. Somehow, in metalan-
guage, the designer of today seems to compre-
hend few limits, and is intentionally trying to
conquer and fit into decisive roles in the ongo-
ing and quite frightening European innovation
and restructuring processes.
Strangely, the transformation of the role of
the designer and the credo of design educa-
tion might remind us of the breakthrough of
the modern in architecture in the late 1920s.
Modernism, ideologically speaking, gave a new
meaning to the discipline of architecture in the
production of buildings, spaces and environ-
ments for industrial society. The role of the
architect profoundly changed, from a con-
sultant in the field of visual aesthetics to an
essential player in modernisation. Politically
speaking, the modernist architect in the Scan-
dinavian countries evolved from a role of oppo-
sition to dominant positions in the formation
of welfare societies. The architect really posi-
tioned himself.
In this process, the architectural education
at AHO was involved in two sometimes even
antagonistic roles as a keeper and player in the
development of buildings, both as products of
craft and as works of art. The craftsmanship
was often closely linked to the tradition of
building in wood, and the artwork elaborated
spatiality, situating artefacts in nature. The
term
poetic modernism
has been used as a
description, and the tradition is sometimes
termed
Osloskolen
in Norwegian architecture.
The other role was positioned more closely to
the tasks and pragmatic building realities of
the welfare state.
Comparing the contemporary education
in the different master programmes at AHO,
the way they meet the turnaround challeng-
es and the needs for social, cultural and eco-
nomic relevance in academic education, there
are some common denominators. The scope
has been widened, also by introducing new
programmes like Landscape Urbanism and
Service Design. Over the course of 25 years
AHO also has been able to establish a research
