AHO links to a tradition in architectural education going back to the French academies. This system was
based on individual tuition and not organized in classes. The student chose his tutor, his master and
learned his skills through repetition and guided transfer from the master in his studio. Invention was not
the task, but learning the skills and wisdom of classical practice.
The architectural education at AHO even today adheres to the academy tradition in teaching. Organized
in studios and workshops, learning is predicted on doing, synthesizing knowledge in investigations and
projects. The intention is to try to treat each student individually and to maintain a resource situation
that retains this as a possibility. A problem with the old master/apprentice studio model was that it had
both the positive and negative potential of conserving old skills and knowledge. The transformation of the
school into a research and investigative institution has renewed the studio as a platform for education.
About half the studios in the 2.5 year’s master-classes are linked to research programmes, the other half
are linked to artistic and creative practice.
Politically speaking the modernist architect in the Scandinavian countries filled a role in the formation of
the welfare societies. 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 works of art.
The craftsmanship was often closely linked to the tradition of building in wood, and the artwork elabo-
rated spatially, situating artefacts in nature. The term poetic modernism has been used as a description,
and the tradition is sometimes termed the “Oslo School” (“Osloskolen”) in Norwegian architecture. The
other role was positioned more closely to the tasks and pragmatic building realities of the welfare state.
Architecture at AHO is very conscious about cultivating an established tradition and adapting established
ways of working with current challenges. AHO is still a school for building, but the subject matters have been
widened substantially most profoundly into urbanism, landscape urbanism and theory and history. Even
more important is the development of a wide scope of alternative future roles for the architect in society.
ARCHITECTURAL
STUDIES
