AHO WORKS StudieS 2011-2012
Institute of Urbanism and Landscape
Legacy, Opportunity, Responsibility
along the Pacific Ring of Fire and the rapid
shift of water-based urbanism to road-based
urbanism suggest the alternative to build back
better. Mitigation can become proactive rath-
er than reactive if urban design and planning
anticipate risk and exposure – designing for
resilience by remoulding landscapes and recon-
structing settlements to bend fromhazards, but
to not break. There is clearly ample room for
innovation and experimentation that is safe
to fail [Lister 2007], which is not only herald-
ing a new approach to recovery planning but
also more fundamentally questioning resource
exploitation, infrastructure and territorial deve-
lopment and settlement structures. AHO’s
Institute of Urbanism and Landscape is, and
will engage much more in, the future with
these and other piercing questions, which
are ultimately questions of design (research).
The Institute has the opportunity to more
actively engage in the world of ideas and more
dynamically and critically take stances local-
ly, nationally and globally through teaching,
fundamental and design research, consult-
ing with municipalities, ministries and other
stakeholders, capacity building projects and
through more precisely defining the funda-
mental
agency
of the Institute´s own multidis-
ciplinary fields.
At present, for example, in Oslo, we are ask-
ing how landscape can be (re)considered as a
spatial and productive asset in the dynamic
transformation of Norway’s rapidly expanding
capital city. And more specifically, for example
(in autumn 2012), how can the explicit inclusion
of a forgotten, nearly buried creek once again
become one of the vital lifelines in the fjord
landscape that has become tamed and domes-
ticated over the centuries? Can the Hovinbek-
ken’s daylighting imbue its 11.1 km
2
catchment
area with an identity that is once again more
related to the specificity of its water (and for-
est) environment and not a part of the pres-
ent-day city building modus that is engulfing
the territory? All cities in Norway (as more or
less everywhere in the world) originated in
the proximity of streams, that delivered drink-
ing water, energy, transport possibilities, etc.
The question can thus be whether the planned
reopening of the Hovinbekken can become a
model for Oslo and the city regions of Norway
not only to rethink the stream/city threshold,
but also to develop new typologies for urban
infrastructure, public space, public facilities
and housing? The Oslo case is one of many of
the Institute’s water urbanisms/cartographies
of hydrology projects (with others through-
out Norway and parts of Europe, Africa and
Southeast Asia), where students and faculty
researchers alike are delving into the fact that
water is a powerful and unavoidable element of
both connection and contestation. It is a basic
necessity for (city) life, but also often a funda-
mental threat. Since it has been simultaneous-
ly an opportunity and threat, water has always
been a key element in the development of the
