60 540 The Road (Autumn 2025)

The road as a site for landscape, art, and architecture has been a recurring topic in Norway. Over the past three decades, it has been explored through initiatives such as the Norwegian Scenic Routes, Art Norland, and numerous exhibitions and publications that frame the road as a cultural space.

While the role of Norwegian roads in shaping national identity and their spatial implications is well documented, there has been a tendency to overlook the road itself as a landscape surface—beyond its function as infrastructure.

This studio will reframe the road and its associated material, ecological, and social phenomena as constructed landscapes in their own right—not merely as frames for scenic views. We will investigate and design alternative uses for road fragments, elevating mundane roadside conditions through highly detailed and technically sophisticated projects that intersect with civil engineering.

We will not design traditional landscape rest stops or buildings meant only for contemplation of the view. Instead, we will focus on overlooked roadside elements: water management infrastructure, service roads, tunnel entrances, gas stations, safety elements, signage, EV charging stations, and more. These elements hold untapped spatial potential.

We will also address mining and other infrastructural sites embedded in striking landscapes, proposing projects that engage both ecological degradation and natural beauty. The studio will engage the evolving nature of road and car culture in Northern Europe, addressing new design challenges that extend beyond Norway.

We will examine how technology mediates our understanding of beautiful yet complex landscapes. In Norway, highly detailed landscape data—such as lidar scans and multispectral imagery—is publicly available but underutilized by designers. This studio will explore how to interpret and translate this material into spatial decisions. Concrete workflows will be taught to help students use this data effectively.

Knowledge:

• Formulate ideas through rapid modeling and drawing.
• Understand how environmental and climatic concerns shape spatial decisions in both outdoor and indoor spaces.
• The aesthetic and environmental potentials of road infrastructure.

Skills:

• Develop advanced landscape modeling and composition skills
• Learn to collaborate with engineers, focusing on structural optimization and esthetics simultaneously.
• Learn to work with high-resolution landscape surveys (lidar, multispectral imagery)
• Propose site-specific projects based on remote sensing data
• Create discursive details that embody core project ideas

General competence:

• Design of infrastructural elements and spaces.
• Landscape analysis with a focus on the translation of site surveys to concrete spatial and material decisions.

After identifying the sites and producing hi-resolution surveys, each pair of students will design one project on a given site. Each project will be defined by a project brief addressing the potential of different infrastructural elements in the road. Each project will be informed by different road phenomena identified in the site surveys.

The studio will use rapid design exercises to foster strong conceptual development in form, geometry, structure, and scale. Site research and design will proceed in parallel.

Weekly progress on digital and physical models. Drawings will be derived from the models on a constant basis.

There will be some lectures during studio time.

The students are expected to develop their projects in the studio and that weekly progress can be followed.

Excursion:

Norway (Required): A short trip to the west coast in late August (Friday–Monday), beginning and ending in Stavanger.

Northern Italy (Optional): A 4-day trip in October to Mendrisio. We will meet with researchers studying roadside architecture and infrastructure in Ticino since 1960. The trips include a roadtrip to experience some of the spaces and significant engineering projects in the region.

Compulsory attendance requirements: Excursion in Norway

Compulsury work requirements: Large models, project folder, final presentation in pdf form.

Form of assessment: Project assessment

Grading scale: Pass/fail

Assessment criteria: Assessed through models and drawings based on originality, form, composition, site adaptation, site surveys interpretations and structural inventiveness.