AHO Re Store Folkemuseet
Spring 2020: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth taught the Re Store Folkemuseet for students on master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) The studio works with the transformation of existing buildings and this semester the studio worked with the vernacular but in a site where the urban and rural converge: the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum). The studio uses the outdoor collection of buildings at the open-air museum to explore the preservation of historic architecture as a political act, with the aim of instilling a critical appreciation for the enduring benefits and limitations of vernacular construction beyond the pastiche.
In collaboration with architect Ane Sønderaal Tolfsen.
Drawing by Oda Østerås Lobben
AA Experimental Unit 14
Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth were tutors in the Experimental Unit 14 "Hoary Building" at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in the academic year 2019/2020, with Chris Pierce and Aram Mooradian.
In order to provide a contained cultural framework, the work was based in Norway. The Nordic context is manageable in scale and a historical periphery dependent on merging vernacular with continental ideas. It is the blending of ‘types’ avoids ethnocentric pitfalls, spurious local connotations, and singular notions of authenticity. The studio designed buildings that engage with the idiosyncratic qualities of Italian Mannerism, draw from Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, trace the lines of Nordic building traditions – from vernacular structures to regional modernism – and are positioned in relation to two other seminal references: Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Genius Loci and Kenneth Frampton’s Critical Regionalism.
Model by James Emery
AHO Re Store Fieldworks
Spring 2019: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth taught the Re Store Fieldworks for students on master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO)
The studio works with the transformation of existing buildings and will creatively transform disused farm structures in rural Norway. The case study for the studio was the large barn at Billerud farm in Toten, a typical "Enhetslåve". The studio was tasked with reimagining a future use through deconstruction, repurposing and recycling.
In collaboration with architect Tristan Boniver from the collective Rotor in Brussels
Model by Thea Platou
KHIO Translating Tradition
Erlend Skjeseth ran the workshop Translating Tradition for year 2 and 3 level at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO) in 2019
The work was based on survey recordings done at at the open air museum at the Norwegian Cultural Museum (Norsk Folkemuseum) . The models are meditations on the tectonic and material composition of vernacular buildings through a translation into different materials.
Model by Sindre Buraas
More work here
AHO Modular Vernacular
Spring 2018: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth taught the Modular Vernacular Form Studio for students on master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO)
The studio will produce new architectural forms for a historically sensitive setting. Design work will focus on the relationship between construction and context. The aim will be to propose new spatial models for the present-day inhabitation of a heritage site.
Model by Erik Lundquist
AHO Re Store Asker Town Hall
Autumn 2017: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth ran the master studio Re Store Muncipal Monuments in the spring semester of 2018 at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The studio explored how to adapt, transform and restore a modernist town hall in Asker on the outskirts of Oslo. The town hall is due to be affected by the current municipal reforms in Norway.
Image of work by Ismini Papaioannou.
AHO Re Store Munchmuseet
Spring 2017: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth ran a master studio at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design together with Andrea Pinochet about the potential transformation of Munch Museet in Oslo. The studio was run in parallel to intermediate unit 9 at the Architectural Association in London. The Re-Store studio sought to understand maintenance as a key form of preservation and preservation as an act of maintenance. The projects address that within the next few years, the government’s policy of centralisation will affect more than twenty of Oslo’s biggest institutions, each abandoning their purpose-built headquarters, either because of relocation or closure, and provide alternative uses of the building by working with its inherent qualities.
Image by Roman Kekel, nominated for RIBA Silver Medal 2017
AA Intermediate Unit 9
Amandine Kastler was a tutor in the Intermediate 9 Unit at the Architectural Association School of Architcture in London in the academic year 2016/2017, with Chris Pierce and Chris Matthews. The unit explored food as the last stronghold of place. By radically making and experimenting with what we eat, the projects explored unknown architectural languages and created new layers of building history. The existing Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway provided the site for the projects.
Models by Idil Kucuk
AA Visiting School Lyngør
2015-2019: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth have been running The AA Visiting School Lyngør, The Island Reader, every summer since 2015, with Daniel Ayat and Alex Laing. The visiting school is an intensive three week course on the island of Lyngør off the south coast of Norway. Students explore the distinctive relationship between the island’s landscape and its impeccably preserved built environment. In collaboration with the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, students become acquainted with Norwegian culture and the key points of Nordic architecture, and employ a variety of site-specific tools for architectural research.
