Alternative Fuel Strategy, Sydney
Main semester assignment

The building is the first stage in a long term strategy, a system that can grow at a economically sustainable rate and take on the shifts in consumer habits and trends. A franchise network of alternative fuel stations spreading from… [more]

Refugee Asylum, Adamstuen
2 month assignment

The building is a flexible apartment complex with up to 4 families or a total of about 20 people. The private areas are of moderate size, however shared activity rooms on the 1st floor, the plaza in front of the building and the roof top… [more]

Center for sustainable development, Copenhagen
Main semester assignment
Based on 70°N and Dahl & Uhre‘s Excentral Park

The center is a cultural and academic meeting point for the development of ideas towards a sustainable urban life style. The building works on principles… [more]

Moss Innovative University, Moss

2 month group assignment
Exhibition December 2009 to January 2010 in Moss.

MiU is an instigator to attract young academics and intensify the urban center of the town. An approximate of 60.000 inhabitants should be a goal along with great infrastructure through high speed trains and more airport activity… [more]

School is a stage where the students gets prepped and ready to take part in and fulfill the work they will have afterwards. However the higher education schools also have their own inherent work, their research. Maybe giving the whole student body a chance to participate and learn through research would make a long education feel like it had more purpose at times. Many assignments bear the banner that they mimic the nature of ‘real life’ work situations, but of course you always only touch a few basic sides of a projects demands. You never get to the subtle details that would make it a full out reenactment of a ‘real’ project.

Leebus Woods’ Architecture School 401 is a series where he discuss this strategy and show examples of what he has been doing with his classes. Work that show how his classes learn both technical and theoretical lessons through more or less abstract projects. The closest I’ve been myself to these sorts of approaches have been through my 3rd semester ‘Urbanism and the City’ course with Adrian Lahoud and Frank Minnaert at UTS where we made a Psychogeographic Map and a video presentation of our reading of the city.

Lately I’ve seen several voices that comment on this kind of approach and in Germany this summer the DIA holds a conference called ‘Design Education as Research Lab’ with speakers from many of the most famous schools of architecture around the world.

I’ve visited an exhibition and synopsis at HCU Hamburg ‘Explorationen: Tendenzen und Potentiale der Architekturforschung’ and ‘Stop Making Sense’ which showcased a project of theoretical work with essays and graphics.

It’s fascinating to see good fusion of theory, design and built items and I really hope for less separation of the parts in school as well as a more research oriented approach in the earlier stages of architecture school. The essentials of architectural practice should be possible to teach through more though provoking means than emulating the work life and also be valuable to the schools research output in the long run.