Since the Napoleonic occupation of the country in 1798, images of Egypt have played continuously on the European mind. A geopolitical hotspot, Egypt was central in 19th and 20th century reconceptualisations of time and speed, infrastructure and technology, aesthetics and movement, all negotiated through circulating imagery. This exhibition traces the history of moving images and [...]

The book Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale, written by Léa-Catherine Szacka and published by Marsilio, was launched at the Biennale di Venezia with a panel including the participation of Roberto Zancan (Chair UNESCO and IUAV Venice); Marco de Michelis (IUAV Venice); Oliver Elser (DAM Museum Frankfurt; Manuel Orazi (Università di Bologna), and Léa-Catherine [...]

Natalie Hope O’Donnell defended her PhD thesis ”Space as curatorial practice: the exhibition as a spatial construct. ‘Ny kunst i tusen år’ (1970), ‘Vår Verden av Ting – Objekter’ (1970) and ‘Norsk Middelalderkunst’ (1972) at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter.”  The members of the adjudication committee were Professor Peter Lang, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm; Senior Lecturer Annika Öhrner, Södertörn University, Stockholm; and [...]

The edited collection Debatten om stortingsbygningen 1836-1866, edited by Mari Hvattum, chronicles the heated debate over the Norwegian parliament building around the middle of the nineteenth century. Gathering 65 primary texts written by politicians, intellectuals, artists and architects in newspapers, magazines and proceedings, the collection brings to the fore the close relationship between architecture, publication culture, and public debate [...]

Tina Di Carlo, PhD candidate in the OCCAS research project Place and Displacement: Exhibiting Architecture, defended her dissertation The Construction of an Exhibition within Architecture Culture: Deconstructivist Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, 1988. The members of the adjudication committee were professor Philip Ursprung, ETH, Zürich, associate professor Patricia Morton, University of California, Riverside, and [...]

Friday night July 17, 2015, the V&A holds a conversation between Jorge Otero-Pailos and Mari Lending on Otero-Pailos’  ’The Ethics of Dust: Trajan’s Column’, which is on view in the Cast Courts. The work was commissioned by the V&A as part of the show ‘All Of This Belongs To You’, co-curated by Rory Hyde, Corinna [...]

Mari Lending, professor of history of theory at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and co-founder of OCCAS, gave a key note presentation, titled ‘Fabrics of Reality in Fiction’, at the Reading Architecture symposium. The event was organised by the History and Theory Program, School of Architecture, McGill University and hosted at the Benaki Museum in Athens, [...]

“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of postmodernism”. In 1980, reporting on the First Venice Architecture Biennale, French journalist Gérard-Georges Lemaire adapted Marx and Engels’ famous formula, used as opening passages of The Communist Manifesto, in order to describe the state of affaire in European architectural culture. But what exactly had happen to architecture between [...]

The book Hva er arkitektur [What is Architecture], written by Mari Hvattum as part of Universitetsforlaget’s “what is” series, was launched on Wednesday 22 April 2015 at 3 pm in the AHO cantina. Written as an accessible introduction to architecture as a discipline and a phenomenon, the book addresses students, practitioners, and the general public. [...]

Charlotte Klonk, professor of art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin and member of the OCCAS advisory board, gave a key note lecture at the conference “Exhibiting the Every Day”, 19-20 March 2015. The conference is part of the study circle ‘Heterologies of the Everyday’, funded by the Nordic Summer University. Organised jointly by the [...]

The Printed and the Built project held its first international symposium in Oslo, October 23–25, 2014. In addition to the local project team, the scholars invited were Caroline van Eck from University of Leiden, Adrian Forty from University College London, Richard Wittman from University of California, Santa Barbara, and Wallis Miller from University of Kentucky.   [...]

As part of the Weekend Specials, the seminar “Architecture in Translation: The Mediation of Social and Urban Spaces” set out to explore translation in architecture from a number of angles. Sherry Simon, Shumi Bose, Gro Bonesmo, Anna Andersen, Marina Lathouri, Roberta Marcaccio, Mari Lending, and Joan Ockman presented, ending with a roundtable with Rem Koolhaas, [...]

Heinrich Ernst Schirmer (1814–1887) was one of the most significant architects of 19th century Norway. He designed churches, prisons, schools, stations, hospitals and houses all over the country, including Norway’s first penitentiary, the first mental hospital, and the first public museum; The National Gallery in Oslo. The poet J.S. Welhaven described Schirmer as “our best [...]

At the third international meeting of the European Architectural History Network in Turin, the editors Mari Lending and Mari Hvattum will present the book Modelling Time: The Permanent Collection 1925–2014. Springing from a master studio at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the exhibition Model as Ruin at the House of Artists in [...]

To what extend is preservation a proactive process, one that is as much concerned with the past as with the design of contemporary politics and identities? Over three lectures, the Preservation Design seminar explores issues of preservation, authenticity, and the document in the built environment. In a lecture titled The Authentic, Thordis Arrhenius explores the consequences of the notion [...]

The Nordic Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale is the site for the launch of  Place and Displacement: Exhibiting Architecture, published with Lars Müller Publishers in Zurich. The book which springs from a symposium in Oslo held in 2013, includes new essays by Felicity D. Scott, Martin Braathen, Helena Matsson, Nathalie Hope O’Donnell, Daniel Birnbaum, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, [...]

The symposium gathers a group of outstanding practitioners from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Sweden and Norway to discuss the emergence of experimental preservation within architecture and art, having a special focus on the reuse of post-war structures. The event is an opportunity to meet leading figures within this burgeoning field, and to exchange ideas, [...]

Mattias Ekman, formerly PhD candidate at Institute for Form, Theory and History at AHO in affiliation with OCCAS, successfully defended his thesis Edifices. Architecture and the Spatial Frameworks of Memory on 22 November 2013. The members of the adjudication committee were Adrian Forty (first opponent), Professor of Architectural History, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University [...]

OCCAS scholar Thordis Arrhenius  gives a  keynote lecture at the conference Documentary Remains at GSAPP, Columbia University, November 14th 2013. Arranged by Mark Wasuita, the conference looks at 20th century exhibitions and exhibition research. Using archives, records, documents and remains as its points of departure, the conference addresses the apparent imbalance between the centrality claimed for exhibitions in contemporary scholarship and the [...]

Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris hosts the seminar series Arts, innovation, industrie: Gottfried Semper et les débuts d’une science des artefacts, organised jointly by INHA, L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Musée des arts décoratifs, École nationale supérieure de création industrielle, and the University of Leiden. Mari Hvattum contributes to [...]

In September 1931, a grand display of contemporary Norwegian architecture was shown in the House of Artists in Oslo. The recently inaugurated Kunsthalle was filled to the brim by scale models, photographs, drawings, and installations. At the core of the exhibition was the “Permanent Collection” of scale models and photography, founded by Norwegian architects in [...]

OCCAS has invited Pippo Ciorra, Chief Curator of Architecture, MAXXI, Rome to lecture on “Sustainability: A Claim for Aesthetics”, as part of The Oslo Triennale 2013. Ciorra will give a critical, exibitionary view on sustainability through Re-cycling and Energy, drawing on his two recent shows ENERGY. Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids (2013) and Re-Cycle. [...]

The ambition to exhibit architecture always entails a paradox: how to exhibit something so large and complex as a building or a city or how to represent something as elusive as an architectural experience that unfolds in space and time? The Yale Symposium Exhibiting Architecture: A Paradox? invited OCCAS scholars Mari Lending, Léa-Cathrine Szacka, and [...]

Arranged by Chitkara University, Punjab, India in collaboration with ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage, Foundation Le Corbusier, Getty Foundation and several other local and international institutions the conference focused on the preservation, identification of 20-century heritage. With Chandigarh as a case, the conference examined the scope and the challenges of managing the recent [...]

Even Smith Wergeland defended the thesis titled  From Utopia to Reality – the Motorway as a Work of Art on 22 March 2013. It was approved by the following adjudication committee: Professor David Pinder, Roskilde University, professor Siri Skjold Lexau, University of Bergen, and associate professor Jonny Aspen, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.    [...]

Within the framework of the OCCAS research project Place and Displacement: Exhibiting Architecture, we have invited scholars from the new research field of architectural exhibitions to discuss on‐going work that explores the exhibition as an architectural medium par excellence. The three sessions – Display, Canon and Time – overlap and intersect thematically. The symposium will [...]

KTH School of Architecture is delighted to host the launch of the third issue of the Nordic Journal of Architecture, edited by Mari Lending, AHO and guest edited by Tim Anstey and Catharina Gabrielsson, KTH School of Architecture, on the theme “Alteration”. The launch will take place at the School of Architecture Library, Östermalmsg 26, Stockholm, [...]

Under the heading Exhibitions and the Canon of Modern Architecture, Wallis Miller and Mari Lending will co-chair two panels onat the annual NORDIK art history conference in Stockholm. “Part I: Exhibitions that Shaped Modern Architecture” and “Part II: Modern architecture After the Fact” will investigate the productive role of architectural exhibitions, as well as questions of [...]

OCCAS hosted the symposium “Heritage Values in Growing Cities” at AHO. Organized by Thordis Arrhenius and Lothar Diem in collaboration with Oslo municipality’s heritage management office, the event was conceived as part of officially celebrating the centenary for Norway’s Directorate for Cultural Heritage. The symposium addressed questions on current practice in heritage management in relation [...]

Wallis Miller and Dean Michael Speaks hosted a symposium called “Design Research: Four Examples from Scandinavia.”  Mari Lending (AHO), Katja Grillner (KTH, Stockholm), Jonas Runberger (White Architects, Stockholm) and Ville Kokkonen (Artek, Helsinki) discussed the implications of pursuing design as research at a university, in practice and in manufacturing with the faculty of the College of [...]

Resonating with chief curator David Chipperfield’s theme “Common Ground” for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, the School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, is organizing the panel “Shifting Ground” in the biennale’s special program for universities. Léa-Catherine Szacka, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pippo Chirra, MAXXI Architettura, Rome; Mari Lending, Oslo School of Architecture and Design; [...]

OCCAS and Artifice Books celebrate the launch of the Fragile Monument by  Thordis Arrhenius at this year’s Venice Biennale. Duncan Mccorquodale of Artifice books on architecture will be in  conversation with OCCAS scholars Thordis Arrhenius, Mari Lending and Jorge Otero Pailos on the contemporary need  for critical architectural scholarship and publications. Heritage objects today—monuments, city-quarters, regions,  [...]

OCCAS scholars Thordis Arrhenius, Jorge Oterio- Pailos and Lothar Diem will participate in the Inaugural Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies on the Re/theorisation of Heritage Studies. The Association of Critical Heritage Studies, to be launched at this conference, will establish in association with International Journal of Heritage Studies (IJHS) an extensive network [...]

Mark Cousins, Director of Histories and Theory at the Architectural Association, London will speak on The Cliché. The cliché represents an insoluble problem for language and art in modernity. Technology, cities and forms of signification all entail a radical increase in the volume and density of discourse. This produces both a standardisation of discourse and a [...]

The second issue of Nordic Journal of Architecture will be launched at the EAHN conference in Brussels. Entitled “Nonumentality”, the special section is guest edited by Mari Hvattum, and revisits the architectural culture of post war Scandinavia.

For the second international EAHN meeting in Brussels, Wallis Miller and Mari Lending will chair the panel New ideas, New Models? Architectural Representation and its Object in the Twentieth Century. The architectural model represents a particular mode of reflection. Oscillating between the abstract and the concrete, the model is a working tool for conceiving, developing, [...]

This lecture by Felicity D. Scott, Assistant Professor, Columbia University investigates the “Tent City” set up by the American commune Hog Farm for the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, to unpack the semantic and political resonances of the event. Hog Farm was legendary for having fed and organized the crowds of youth at the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival. The group’s activities at the UN’s inaugural conference led to nicknaming the event as “Woodstockholm.”

This is the second OCCAS seminar on the future of the government quarter after the 22 July bombing. Randall Mason, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania will speak from the perspective of values-centered conservation. Mattias Ekman will comment on the ongoing debate about demolition or restoration. Christian Ebbesen will introduce value assessment in relation to the work done by the ministry of government administration (FAD).

Organized by Wallis Miller, Mari Lending, and Erik Langdalen and The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo this one day seminar will consider issues surrounding the installation of a new permanent exhibition of Norwegian architecture. This enterprise poses interesting dilemmas, as the exhibition has to deal with the troubling concept of a national canon, the selection of emblematic works and the overall curating of architectural history. The National Museum will plan the exhibition in collaboration with OCCAS.

Scholars from Place and Displacement: Exhibiting Architecture gathered in Rome at the Norwegian Institute for a seminar: On Scale. The participants took scale to task to reconsider its relevance within the historical and contemporary practices of exhibiting architecture, amongst the city whose history perhaps best problematizes the issue. The program, which considered issues of monumentality and preservation, models and [...]

Léa-Catherine Szacka presents her PhD dissertation Exhibiting the Postmodern: Three Narratives for a History of the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale. The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale ‘The Presence of the Past’was a multi-faceted display of international contemporary architecture with an Italo-American twist. Successfully playing on postmodern form and content, this exhibition marked a new relation between the worlds [...]

This open, one-day symposium celebrates the end of the Routes, Roads and Landscape project. Antoine Picon, Professor, Harvard University and Hans Dienel, Professor, TU Berlin will lecture on roads, landscapes, and their entanglement in each. Researchers from the Routes, Roads and Landscape project also present their studies. PROGRAM 10.00   Welcome, Mari Hvatum, Oslo School of Architecture [...]