40 583 Architectural Project 1: Three in One (Autumn 2026)

Course responsible: Beate Hølmebakk

The course is part of the Architectural Project 1 studio series where the autumn course, Three in One, is set up with three finite projects to be carried out individually, one after the other. The spring course, Buildings in Life, is set up with one individual project to be developed throughout the semester.

The studio series addresses the conception and design of architectural projects as creative and critical processes through which ideas are tested and materialized as case studies in defined contexts.

The Three in One course focuses on central methods and operations of architectural work at an advanced level, encouraging open-minded yet disciplined individual responses articulated through the language of architectural form within a limited timeframe. The course provides relevant professional training.

At the start of each project a program will provide specifications of a small to medium sized public building and a site. The briefs will include a range of architectural tasks, whether transformation or new construction, recognizing that each type of task presents distinct conceptual, spatial, material, and constructive challenges.

The three projects will adhere to the overriding order of Territory, World and Universe. As such the projects will address architecture’s potential for local, global and spiritual impact. The expected output for each project is comparable to the deliverables for architectural competitions.

Teaching contributions from the faculty’s structural engineers secure the aim of the studio production towards buildability. Hence, the course trains students to respond to different briefs and conditions with precision and ambition. The workload is considerable

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

• Formulate architectural ideas through critical conceptualization
• Use design techniques that advance and communicate an architectural proposal within a limited timeframe.
• Develop a project to a comprehensive level by iterative studies of the core constituents of architectural production
• Acquire and apply specific knowledge in dialogue with relevant expertise
• Integrate critical feedback while preserving independence
• Evaluate architectural quality through assessment of a project’s constitution, integrity and impact

The course is organized around the principle of studio teaching where each student develops an architectural project as a response to a given individual brief on a specific site. The work is discussed weekly in one-to-one in desk crits and collectively in pin-ups. Weekly talks by the studio teachers or shared reflections on relevant texts are important teaching elements.

Models and drawings constitute the material basis for critique and discussion. While few restrictions are placed on how work is produced digital media is excluded from desk-crits and collective pin-ups to foreground spatial, material, and formal reasoning through curated and direct physical representation.

The studio aims to establish a culture where we share ideas, normalize presentations and cultivate a supportive atmosphere of mutual respect. An explicit pedagogical premise of the course is that the work itself is the primary object of discussion.

There will be no excursion.

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

Form of assessment: Project

Grading scale: Pass/fail

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

For each of the three projects the submission consists of

architectural drawings, visualizations, models, a project description including individual specification of the brief and selected process material.