The project is part of our agenda to address the contextual frameworks and to understand how urban cultures develop and influence our build environment. For students there is dual task; to first understand the underlying complexity of the city and secondly how different, even small-scale design intervention may influence a positive development. For the first part we use in-depth analyses of the context to produce sustainable future scenarios that then in return bring us knowledge how to target the design initiatives. There is an emphasize in the vitalisation of the urban life, to enable the social space of the community to flourish.

We have chosen the area of Grønland because of its central and strategically interesting location, but even more for its diverse and multi-cultural community and environment. We see this neighbourhood as a rare oasis in the central Oslo that has still managed to escape the gentrification. We foresee a potential for Grønland to lead the discourse of what the alternative future of urban Oslo could be, and to redefine how we live in a Norwegian city that will be radically different in its social structure then ever before.

The student works have spanned from social activism to infrastructural frameworks; examples such as ‘Start-up Prison’, ‘Drug-Addicts Rehabilitation Centre’ and ‘Green Global Living-rooms’, all celebrate the multicultural particularities of the neighbourhood.