40 577 Housing Exhibition Studio: Building cost & the Oslo Plan (Autumn 2026)

Course responsible: Kim Pløhn

HES is a course series developed by the association Ny Boligplan. Working collectively, we use the means of the SURVEY, the LABORATORY, the PROPOSAL and of the PUBLIC EXHIBITION to generate new knowledge and proposals about the urgent housing issues of today. We actively engage with the politics and finance of housing, and the architectural quality of housing in different situations, ranging from the city scale to the furniture.

HES02 BUILDING COST & THE OSLO PLAN will explore what kinds of apartments low- and middle-income wage earners could afford if housing prices were once again tied directly to building costs. Rising housing prices, especially in Oslo, are making it increasingly difficult for wage earners to live near their workplaces. The studio aims to uncover the financial and regulatory mechanisms that govern today’s housing development, and to reestablish the connection between housing quality and construction costs.

We will survey housing plans from different time periods and study how they are inhabited. We will analyze the actual cost of specific qualities, such as apartment sizes, ceiling heights and other factors that are up for debate in the current climate of deregulation. With housing quality and building costs as a point of departure, the students will then develop proposals for a new “Oslo plan” inspired by the municipal apartment types created in the 1920s. In the final phase, the shared work of the studio will be made into a public exhibition.

At the conclusion of the course the student should be able to:

• Engage with present day debates about housing construction in Norway and abroad
• Conduct ethnographic fieldwork using drawings, questionnaires and photographs
• Prepare and perform limited studies informed by qualitative research methodologies
• Design housing projects and develop related skills such as drawing, modelling, and other forms of architectural representation
• Curate and construct a public exhibition and communicate projects to a wider public
• Work systematically and collectively towards a common end

The course is divided into three phases (SURVEY, LABORATORY, DESIGN) followed by an exhibition showing the collected work of the studio. Each week of the course consists of a pre-planned schedule combining workshops and seminars, desk-crits and pin-ups. Students will be supported and instructed in the necessary tools. We will arrange a study trip to Zürich to visit relevant examples of building projects and to speak with professionals working at the forefront of the housing issue today.

Physical attendance at lectures, reviews, supervision sessions, discussions, and other educational activities is expected and necessary in order to achieve the learning outcomes

Form of assessment:Portfolio

Grading scale: Pass/fail

In order to be assessed in this course, the student must have completed the following activities and assignments:

The porfolio consists of individual and group work from the three semester assignments/phases, edited and presented as a part of the final exhibition according to instructions.