– Help create the changes society needs

SHAPING THE FUTURE: Today is a day that those of you who are graduating will remember for the rest of your lives. You stand at a crossroads, saying goodbye to a familiar environment and to the people, ways of working, and ways of thinking that have shaped you over several years and laid the foundation for your professional practice and identity.

You now turn towards a world in which each of you must find your own footing, your own practice, and your own way of contributing to society.

You are not simply leaving an educational institution. You are stepping into a society in motion—one that is increasingly calling for exactly what you have to offer.

That is worth pausing to reflect on, and perhaps it is precisely what you will remember from today.

For many years, architecture, design, and landscape architecture were seen as disciplines that entered the process late—as fields that gave form to decisions already made by others, coming into their own only after the major choices about economics, technology, or organisation had been settled.

But something is changing, because we have once again begun to understand that our surroundings are never neutral.

How will you use the expertise and perspectives you have gained through your education to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead?

Housing shapes the way we live together. Cities shape our communities. Technologies shape our opportunities and our limitations. Landscapes shape not only our relationship with nature, but also our preparedness, our security, and our visions of the future. Design connects people and technology, extending and supporting both human potential and business in countless ways.

The question, therefore, is no longer whether society needs architecture, design, and landscape architecture. The more interesting question is how you will use the expertise and perspectives you have gained through your education to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

When Norway’s Prime Minister visited AHO last year, he said something simple yet important to the students: society needs your expertise.

I do not believe those words should be understood merely as a polite acknowledgement of an important field of education. I hear them as a genuine recognition that some of the challenges we face as a society can no longer be addressed without the perspectives and ways of thinking that your disciplines bring.

Shaping and understanding

How do we provide more housing without consuming more resources? How do we develop and transform our communities without tearing everything down? How do we make technology more human-centred? And how do we create places that work both for everyday life today and for generations to come?

These are not questions that can be answered by any single discipline alone. But they are questions that your education has prepared you to help answer.

To the designers among you, I would therefore say this: you are entering a world in which design is no longer primarily about objects, but about relationships and systems. It is about healthcare solutions that work for people; digital services that include rather than exclude; technologies designed with users in mind; and an understanding that social sustainability is not an add-on to professional practice, but an integral part of it.

Design is therefore no longer simply about creating something new. It is about taking responsibility for how the new affects people’s lives. That commitment is clearly visible in your diploma projects. Carry it with you, and put it to active use in the years ahead.

To the architects among you, I would say that you are entering a profession in transition, where the most important task may no longer be to build as much as possible, but to develop the ability to recognise what already exists and to discover the qualities inherent in what we already have.

You will work with transformation, materials, and housing, and you will become part of a broader shift away from the assumption that development must always mean new construction. I hope that through your work you will help demonstrate that quality is not the opposite of efficiency, but rather what makes efficiency human.

To the landscape architects among you, I would say that your discipline has become part of society’s infrastructure in a way that has perhaps never been more evident than it is today. And perhaps we feel this especially strongly here in Norway—from urban development to the High North and the Arctic, from climate adaptation to new ways of living and moving through our environments.

Our society needs people who not only understand landscapes, but who can shape them and grasp their significance for the lives we are going to live within them.

The landscape architecture and architecture projects presented in your diploma examinations demonstrate this clearly, each in its own way. Build on the knowledge you have gained and carry it forward into the next stage of your journey.

We shape the future through our choices and actions

Recently, I read Lázár, the historical novel by the 23-year-old Swiss author Nelio Biedermann.

It is a story about a changing Europe and about societies that evolve gradually while people try to live their lives, create homes, find their bearings, and make sense of the world around them.

One of the most compelling aspects of the novel is the way it portrays change—not as something dramatic or sudden, but as something that emerges through small shifts and through the choices people make about what they are willing to let go of and what they wish to preserve.

It struck me that this novel may also be a story about your time.

Because the world rarely changes all at once. It changes through the spaces we create, the materials we choose, the technologies we develop, and the places we make possible.

Perhaps this is where the novel offers an important lesson for you as well. In Lázár, change is not portrayed as something clear-cut or inevitable, but as something that emerges in the tension between what we choose to preserve and what we are willing to change. It depicts people trying to navigate realities that have not yet taken final form, and in doing so it reminds us that the future is not a destination towards which we move. It is something we create through our actions and our choices.

That is precisely the responsibility you will carry into your professional lives.

In your work, you will often find yourselves in situations where there is no single correct solution. Situations where the challenge is not to start from scratch, but to work with what already exists—to adapt, reinterpret, and rethink.

That requires not only professional excellence, but also judgement: the ability to understand what has value, what can be changed, and what deserves to endure.

And perhaps this is where the connection to your education becomes most visible.

You have not been educated to provide quick answers. You have been educated to embrace complexity and to work in the space where aesthetics, function, sustainability, and human needs do not necessarily point in the same direction, but must be brought into dialogue with one another.

It is not the easiest path.

But it is the path that makes a difference.

It is easy to believe that societies are shaped by major decisions. Yet they are often shaped by people who do something far more tangible—people who draw, design, build, and connect us to one another.

One of the most important things you take with you from AHO is therefore not simply a profession, but a way of seeing the world.

You have been educated to move between scales; between aesthetics and politics; between technology and human life; and between what is possible and what is necessary.

You are specialists, but you are also generalists, because you can connect what others separate.

I believe that will be one of the most important capabilities of the future.

Dear graduates. The world you are entering is never finished. It is constantly changing, finding new forms and new expressions. Your task is therefore not to provide perfect answers, but to ask the right questions and to insist on the kind of quality that gives all of us the framework for the good lives we hope to live.

You leave AHO with knowledge, expertise, and opportunities. But those opportunities also come with responsibility.

I look forward to following your work and the impact I know you will have on the world around you. I also hope that AHO will always remain a place where you feel at home and welcome to return—whether for professional debates, further education, collaboration, or simply to reconnect.

Today, you become our colleagues rather than our students, and I look forward to the conversations we will continue to have in the years ahead.

Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for allowing us at AHO to be part of your journey and your development.

Congratulations, and all the very best for the future.

Reference:

Lønne, Irene Alma: Speech to graduating students, Spring 2026. Diploma ceremony on 12 June 2026. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design.