AHO Transformation in Practice (TIP) Infill
Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth taught Transformation in Practice (TIP) Infills for students at master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) in 2024.
Transformation in Practice Infill focused on the densification of small cities by proposing an apartment block for a historic centre in rural Norway. Working within this context, the studio asked the following questions:
What does it mean to design contextually in our times? How do we design urban scale housing in a historical and non-urban context?
In groups students were assigned sites in a historic town centre within a radius of 150 km of Oslo. The sites were assigned according to certain common parameters of size, history, type of urban fabric and zoning plans that advocate further densification. These places are going through densification as sustainability goals and demographic shifts cause rapid growth. This often leads to ill-defined public spaces and generic low-budget architecture that often denatures these towns' historic fabric and scale. The main question has been how to design an urban-scale building in a place with little urban precedence.The brief asked students to find a site that ideally involved transforming existing buildings. It also challenged them to find an architectural language that resonated with the reading of a place and its history. To add specificity to the brief, the students were required to insert at least 6-12 housing units on the site. The emphasis has not been on the perfect plan layout but more so on the expression of the building, challenging the facade as a last-minute consequence of a plan and the idea that a building has one singular expression.
Model by Eskil Buskov Selmer Hasløv and Oscar Johnsgard
KHIO Translating Tradition: Folkemuseet 2024
Amandine Kastler ran the workshop Translating Tradition for year 2 and 3 level at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO) in 2024
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 Jens Martin Misund and Magda Thomsen
AHO Transformation in Practice (TIP) Extensions
Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth taught Transformation in Practice (TIP) Extensions for students at master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) in 2023.
Transformation in Practice Extensions will center on the city’s periphery to build into, on top of and around Oslo’s suburban idyll. The studio will employ a typical architectural commission, transforming and extending an ordinary detached house. Designing domestic extensions in the suburbs is often the bread and butter of architectural practice in the early years. Although the mundane world of suburbia may feel like a steppingstone towards more lofty commissions, they usually entail modest size projects that require complex problem-solving. Nevertheless, they often hold the seeds of more significant ideas. By observing domestic house types in Oslo and proposing concrete architectural projects within and around their built fabric, the studio aims to generate work which are relevant to the larger architectural discourse. The studio will cast light on contrasting qualities and approaches which may be applied in future design tasks, regardless of program.
AHO Transformation in Practice (TIP) Centralteateret
Alena Rieger, Benjamin Sjøberg and Erlend Skjeseth taught Transformation in Practice (TIP) Centralteateret for students at master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) in 2022.
The studio will work with the transformation of Centralteateret in the centre of Oslo. The theatre is a cultural building of complex provenance, making it an ideal case study for working with existing buildings. The first iteration of Centralteateret dates back to the late 18th century, and the theatre has since gone through several transformations. Unique to Centralteateret, these layers are still visibly intact to reveal the rich history embedded in the building's fabric. The different areas share a near undisturbed patina. These qualities should be cultivated rather than sanitised in future scenarios.
A theatre is a machine for illusion and storytelling, where the architecture is working hard to signify and symbolise, flatter, and seduce. The studio will study these aspects of the building to look for ways to improve the existing condition. The studio will propose projects transforming the theatre through a surgical analysis of the many spaces and components of the building. The studio's output will be a series of interventions, provocations and extensions that balance the need to preserve the existing condition with the building's potential for future use.
Full brief here
AHO Transformation in Practice (TIP) Gamlebyen
Amandine Kastler, Benjamin Sjøberg and Erlend Skjeseth taught Transformation in Practice (TIP) Gamlebyenfor students at master level at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) i 2021.
The studio promotes a form of practice within the field of building heritage that is as comfortable working with existing buildings as proposing new. Contemporary architecture needs to develop ways of operating between the lines of history without falling into the well-worn traps of romanticism, sentimentalism and conservatism. Through analysis of the pre-existing urban fabric, this studio will draw on what is already there by harvesting fragments of the historical city and abstracting these findings into durable pieces of architecture. Tools and tactics to engage actively with the historic fabric of the city will be developed, and an elastic approach between standing out and fitting in will be practiced. To do this, the binary opposition between strict conservation and the tabula rasa will be challenged. Working within the constraints and resources of a particular site and its environs, the question we will ask is how to build into, on top and around what already exists.
The testing ground for the work will be Gamlebyen, a neighbourhood situated on the inner east side of Oslo. As the gaze of developers turns east from the seafront, this area is increasingly drawing speculation. Gamlebyen is an area protected by history and archaeology, its existing built environment is a tapestry woven over many centuries by countless authors.
Full brief here
KHIO: Translating Tradition: Gamlebyen
Translating Tradition: Gamlebyen was a workshop run by Erlend Skjeseth at The National Academy of Arts in Oslo Norway during the spring of 2021. The workshop concentrated on the earliest stages of analysis often lacking in contemporary interventions in the city fabric. Through analysis and method, the students drew what is already there as a starting point for something that is radical new through its dialogue with the past.
Model by Chelsea Tännler & Alexander Jürs
Link to more work here
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
KHIO Translating Tradition: Folkemuseet 2019
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 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
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
Room of Possibilities
2017-2020: Amandine Kastler and Erlend Skjeseth has been running an elective course at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design titled "Introduction to Norwegian Architecture". The output of the course was published on the "Rooms of Possibilities" blog. The blog was set up by Andrea Pinochet.
Drawing by Petter Souvorov Elverum
http://www.roomofpossibilities.com/
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.
