About

Urbanisation continues to be a dominant process in Norway and around the World. Urban issues and questions of the urban condition are increasingly important. This implies that much of future research necessarily will have an ‘urban’ component, and this is where our multidisciplinary competence in the study of cities and landscapes become important.

Similarly, climate change and ecological challenges highlight the importance of reading, analysing and structuring landscapes as an important organiser of urban, industrial and infrastructural development. Thus, societal development will have a ‘landscape’ component that has to be critically interrogated. At the same time landscape is a frame of perception that informs new and shifting conceptualisations of changing urban settings.

Through a variety of research approaches, research at the institute focusses on the study of three interlinked themes:
– Urbanity
– Landscapes and cities as material form and process
– The practice of urbanism, urban architectural and landscape design.

Research at the centre includes various forms of propositional and design-based enquiry as well as comparative, critical and historical research. It encourages inter-disciplinary approaches to the research of cities and landscapes and often involves case-based studies and fieldwork.

Geographically, research at the centre converges on Norwegian and northern landscapes and cities – with a particular focus on Oslo and the Oslo region as well as the Arctic region. In addition to this, and providing a key comparative dimension, ongoing research deals with urbanism and landscape in emerging economies in various parts of the world.

Research within the centre has a strong relation to the educational programmes (MA in Architecture, MA in Landscape Architecture and MA in Urbanism), and the master level teaching at the institute is research-based.