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• 

  The Provenance of an Art Center

  This exhibition explores the full material provenance of the Henie Onstad Art Centre (HOK), including building materials, technical infrastructure, furniture, display systems, lighting fixtures, maintenance systems and more.

  By thorough investigation of the archives, and through on-site survey of the building, nine students and two teachers from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) have excavated the ownership history, production history, economy, sourcing, usage and alteration records of its components and materials. By constructing an alternative history of the building, this exhibition challenges the way we understand and assess buildings - and might change the way we transform them for the future.

  Henie Onstad Art Centre is designed by the young Norwegian architects Jon Eikvar and Svein-Erik Engebretsen and was inaugurated August 23rd, 1968. It was radical of its time, both in terms of the curatorial ideas and the innovative architecture. Initiated and funded by the figure skater and Hollywood movie star Sonia Henie and her husband, the shipowner Niels Onstad, HOK represented a state-of-the-art cultural institution much inspired by Moderna Museet, Stedelijk Museum and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Based on the personal relationships of HOK’s director Ole Henrik Moe with people like Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg and Knut W. Jensen, the new center aimed for a new definition of art, showcasing contemporary music, dance, performance, film and photography alongside paintings, drawings and sculpture - engaging its visitors in new ways.

  Eikvar and Engebretsen, recent graduates from Statens Arkitektkurs at Statens Håndverk- og Kunstindustriskole and employees at Nils Holter’s studio, won the competition in 1965 with an innovative scheme influenced by ideas that was circulating at the time. The project development and the building process progressed in line with the radical museum concept, including experimentation with new materials, 1:1 mock-ups, «electronic» site-management and more. Since 1968, the building had been expanded, altered and restored several times, and the art center has gained reputation as one of the leading art institutions in Scandinavia.

  Exhibition

  Nov 8—Dec 15, 2024
  Read more about The Provenance of an Art Center

• 

  Fehn Among Others. Domkirkeodden, Hamar

  Sverre Fehn (1924–2009) is often depicted as a solitary figure, an auteur whose musings on architecture in the landscape witness a deep personal connection with the natural world, but often remain silent about the people that populate it. As the first Scandinavian architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, he is often portrayed as a quintessentially Norwegian and Nordic architect. But his conceptual world was informed by a perpetual interest in the international discourse. Fehn’s work is intimately connected with the architects he nurtured friendships with, and the foreign locales that fascinated him. When asked in an interview in 1995, in the last year of his 24-year tenure as a professor at AHO, what was most important aspect of the school to maintain, he replied, “International contact.”

  Now, at the centennial of his birth, it is time to trace the contexts that informed his work. This year’s Fehn symposium is devoted to a surprisingly overlooked facet of his oeuvre: its collaborative dimension and the international contacts that he nurtured throughout his life. Whether through the close friendship he maintained with Jean Prouvé or his pivotal rapport with John Hejduk in New York after they met in 1977, Fehn’s international orientation was an essential aspect of the evolution of his work. The presentations at the Fehn symposium 2024 are archive-based, presenting new facts and interpretations on Fehn’s work.

  Symposium

  Oct 9, 2024
  Read more about Fehn Among Others. Domkirkeodden, Hamar

• 

  Professor Sverre Fehn Exhibition Opening

  Sverre Fehn was born in Kongsberg on August 14, 1924. He was, and still is, Norway's most famous architect, nationally and internationally. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design celebrates the Fehn centennial with a series of events in collaboration with the National Museum and the journal Arkitektur.

  Tuesday October 1 at 16:00, the centennial exhibition "Professor Sverre Fehn" opens at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). The exhibition sheds light on Fehn's work as rector and teacher at AHO through a wealth of new archival material, curated by assistant professor Nicholas Coates at AHO.

  Rector Irene Alma Lønne and University Lecturer Nicholas Coates at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design will give presentations at the opening.

  About the exhibition:

  Sverre Fehn Fehn was a legendary teacher and lecturer, at home and abroad, and a substantial part of his prolific career took place from the studios, auditorium, board room and corridors of the school, among students and colleagues. When asked in an interview in 1995, in the last year of his 24-year tenure as a professor at AHO, what was most important aspect of the school to maintain, he replied: “International contact”.

  The exhibition “Professor Sverre Fehn” brings out key documents, sketches, correspondence, and other artifacts that deepen our understanding of his well-known works and supplement the established narratives that have been documented and disseminated earlier. Professor Sverre Fehnpresents a lesser-known side of Fehn’s work, outlining the national, international and institutional horizon of his production, as a teacher and lecturer.

  The exhibition builds upon findings from the spring 2024 seminar Authoring Architecture: Fehn 100 run by Thomas McQuillan, and is curated by Nicholas Coates with the assistance of Charlotte Baumgartner, Eskil Buskov Selmer, Tara Eliassen Kongsvik, and Valieriia Loboda.

  AHO thanks the National Museum and NRK for granting access to their archives and providing material for this exhibition.

  Exhibition

  Oct 1—Dec 6, 2024
  Read more about Professor Sverre Fehn Exhibition Opening

• Re-Store: Høvikodden. The Provenance of an Art Centre

  This seminar explores the full material provenance of the Henie Onstad Art Centre (HOK), located at Høvikodden in Bærum, including building materials, technical infrastructure, furniture, display systems, lighting, maintenance systems, as well as the thousands of art works that has been on display across the decades. By thorough investigations of the archives at HOK and at other locations, and through on-site surveys of the building, the students will excavate the sourcing, ownership history, production history, economy, usage and alteration records of the components, materials and artworks. By constructing an alternative history of the building,this seminar challenges the way we understand and value-assess buildings, and might change the way we transform them for the future. In addition, the seminar aims to provide scenarios for HOKs future development.

  Henie Onstad Art Centre was inaugurated in 1968 and designed by the young architects Jon Eikvar and Svein-Erik Engebretsen. It was radical of its time, both in terms of its curatorial ideas and its innovative architecture. Initiated and funded by the figure skater and Hollywood movie star Sonia Henie and her husband, the shipowner Niels Onstad, HOK represented a state-of-the-art cultural institution much inspired by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside of Copenhagen. Based on the personal relationships of HOK’s director Ole Henrik Moe with people like Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg and Knut W. Jensen, the new center aimed for a new definition of art, showcasing contemporary music, dance, performance, film and photography alongside paintings, drawings and sculpture, engaging its visitors in new ways. Eikvar and Engebretsen, recent graduates from Statens Arkitektkurs at Statens Håndverk- og Kunstindustriskole (later Oslo School of Architecture) and employees at Nils Holter’s studio, won the competition in 1965 with an innovative scheme influenced by ideas that was circulating at the time. The project development and the building process progressed in line with the radical museum concept, including experimentation with new materials, 1:1 mock-ups, «electronic» site-management and more. Since 1968, the building had been expanded, altered and restored several times, and the art center has gained reputation as one of the leading art institutions in Scandinavia.

  Course

  Fall 2024
  Read more about Re-Store: Høvikodden. The Provenance of an Art Centre

• Re-Store: Weather

  This studio was dedicated to weather in all its forms and meanings, as well as its implications for the construction, care and understanding of
  architecture.

  Weather constantly dominates news headlines around the world, with reports on floods, rain storms, droughts, landslides, wildfires, blizzards and tornados giving proof of accelerating humaninduced global warming. Architecture is all about weather, providing shelter against the violent forces of nature, spurring creative acts of construction and maintenance. Weather is constructing building codes and regulations, turning architecture into a complex set of material composites and maintenanceschedules. Weather is both science and poetry, chronicled
  through time as surveys and statistics, but also in the form of painting, literature, sculpture, film and photography. Weather is at the center of preservation, activating core questions of the discipline, relating to patina, authenticity, originality, authorship and more. The studio asked for speculative explorations of weather as a broad cultural phenomenon, as well as specific architectural propositions on how to deal with weather in the reuse, transformation and preservation of architecture.

  Course

  Spring 2024
  Read more about Re-Store: Weather

• 

  Petroarkitektur

  Av Erik Langdalen, Kim Pløhn og Nicholas Coates

  Hvordan forholder vi oss som samfunn til paradoksene som møter oss når vi skal gjøre opp regnskapet etter «oljealderen», en paradigmatisk periode i norsk historie som ble innledet med det gigantiske Ekofisk-funnet oktober 1969 og som av klimahensyn må avrundes om ikke mange år. Kan oljens kulturminner innlemmes i norsk kulturarv når vi vet hvor ødeleggende denne virksomheten er for klodens klima? Hvordan måler vi oljeindustriens kulturminneverdi, en virksomhet så altomgripende, uhåndgripelig og paradoksal at den utfordrer de fleste kriterier og konvensjoner som kulturminneforvaltningen styres etter? Hvordan kan vi holde fast i noe som er dømt til å forsvinne på grunn av enorme vedlikeholdsutgifter, forurensningsfare og strenge krav om resirkulering? Og hvordan avdekke, forvalte og viderefortolke denne historien uten å bli offer for industriens selvforståelse og forenklede fortellinger om «oljeeventyret». Paradoksene dannet bakteppet for et masterkurs i sirkulærarkitektur ved Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo (AHO) våren 2023 der fire lærere og atten studenter forsøkte å formulere og svare på noen av spørsmålene knyttet til oljeindustriens etterliv. Denne teksten presenterer studentens arkitekturprosjekter og formidler noen av de diskusjonene som dukket opp underveis.

  Article

  Published Aug 3, 2023
  Read more about Petroarkitektur

• Re-Store: Petroleum

  The Re-Store Petroleum studio course built upon the assumption that Norwegian petroleum production will be phased out in the near future. This gigantic industry will leave behind an enormous amount of structures,
  counting offshore installations like oil-rigs, housing-rigs, sub-sea installations, infrastructure and petroleum products, as well as land-based building structures, urban areas and industrial landscapes. The studio aimed to answer how we can reuse these remains in a meaningful way, how we determine their heritage value, and how they can form the basis for new forms of architecture. Being the main factor for national wealth and a monument of the 20th century, carrying both symbolic and social value, this industry deserves meaningful memorials.

  The students were given existing structures as points of departure and asked to map the many different types and conditions, they were doing research on their material histories, qualities, values and potential for reuse, and developed architectural projects based on the findings. Petroleum and its many bi-products were examined as potential material for new forms.

  Course

  Fall 2023
  Read more about Re-Store: Petroleum

• Re-Store

  The Re-Store teaching unit offers new perspectives on the preservation, reuse and transformation of architectural heritage from the recent past, with a special focus on the provenance of building systems, components and materials. Taking an Experimental Preservation approach, the unit responds to the challenges of the climate crisis by renegotiating the way we understand, evaluate, and transform the built environment. Through MA studios and seminars, the unit aims to reinvigorate the discipline by challenging the prevailing ideas of authorship, origins and the integrity of the architectural monument. Engaged in a wide range of practices counting archival studies, value assessment methods, restoration techniques, survey practices, model building, drawing, writing and dissemination, the students are trained to participate in the contemporary discourse with a critical mindset and high design skills. Recent studios have focused on concrete, building systems, prefabrication, building components, petroleum and weather. Re-Store publications include the Tabula Plena (2016), Experimental Preservation (2016) and Concrete Oslo (2018).

  Former Re-Store faculty: Andreas Angelidakis, Thordis Arrhenius, Bård Helland, Amandine Kastler, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Andrea Pinochet, Kim Pløhn, Alena Rieger, Bryony Roberts, Ingrid Dobloug Roede, Erlend Skjeseth, Jørgen Tandberg, Kjetil Sæterdal, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Helle Bendixen Trier, Espen Vatn.

  Course series
  Read more about Re-Store