Forskningsområder phd

The study sets out to describe and analyse how the mid-twentieth century Norwegian design community domesticated ideologies inherited from the traditional applied art movement (brukskunstbevegelsen) as well as imported from various international currents of the so-called “modern movement”. The empirical studies follow two paths/levels; the ideology/propaganda debated in and mediated through the trade magazine Bonytt, and the strategies/materiality/products developed by the ceramics/earthenware/porcelain manufacturer Figgjo. As such, the dissertation is an attempt at writing a cultural history of industrial design, where design (as) culture is seen as a sort of dialectic or discourse between ideology and practice. This often uneasy relation between ideology and practice is the leitmotif of the study. The concept of domestication, along with other theoretical frameworks and methodological tools appropriated from STS, becomes valuable when studying this process by following the actors in their construction, negotiation and mediation of these ideologies as played out in their main debate forum, the leading design magazine Bonytt. However, the domestication of ideology in Norwegian industrial design does not end with the writings of campaigning designers, enthusiastic journalists, ardent academics and organization men. The mediations between ideology and practice will also be traced in a domestication perspective. As such, the manufacturing industry - here represented by the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo - represents a second site of domestication, where the ideologies undergo new negotiations and transformations in meeting other users, requirements and circumstances.



Research question

How have the ideas and ideals of what modern design was and should be been transformed in mid-twentieth century Norway? How is design culture, as a dialectics of ideology and practice, transformed through continuous negotiations?



Keywords: industrial design, history, modernism, cultural transformation

To be completed in June 2007.

Advisors: Eivind Kasa and Per Østby

For more information on Kjetil Fallan

The aim of this research project is to develop knowledge about the aesthetic and symbolic aspects of dwellings, and the connection between these aspects and identity. The project explores people’s awareness of the communicative aspect of their dwellings (interior, exterior, and neighbourhood), and further what type of information it gives. The resident’s attitudes in high-priced and low-priced neighbourhoods are compared through survey and interviews.

Keywords: Identity, symbol aesthetics, dwelling, housing, home

To be completed March 2008.

Advisors: Sven Erik Svendsen, Eli Støa (architecture), Arnulf Kolstad (social psychology)

Det overordnede målet med avhandlingen er å få frem en større bevissthet rundt de idealer vi i dag utformer våre bygninger og byplaner etter, gjennom å se nærmere på hvordan trender og tanker fra det 19. århundret kan sies å påvirke dagens arkitektur og byplan. Mer konkret vil jeg ta for meg begrepet om en tidsriktig arkitektur, tidsriktig arkitektur blir avhandlingens tema for utforskning.

Forskningsspørsmål:

• Hvilken rolle har ideen om en ’tidsriktig’ arkitektur spilt blant arkitekter, og hva har blitt ansett som 'riktige' måter å bygge på det siste århundret?

For å svare på spørsmålet er det valgt å ta utgangspunkt i noen tre utvalgte norske arkitektkonkurranser. Dette fordi arkitektkonkurransene gir et egnet materiale for nærmere analyse gjennom sitt konkurranseprogram, sine utkast til utforming og sin jurybedømmelse. Konkurransene representerer også en ganske ’ren’ situasjon, dvs. en situasjon der arkitektene selv dominerer og der idealene for utforming ennå har relativt fritt spillerom. Analysen vil se på hvordan en arkitektkonkurranse (program, vinnerutkast og jury) forholder seg til idealet om tidsriktighet, gjennom krav til, uttalelser om og faktiske forslag til utforming.

Avhandlingen er samtidig en undersøkelse av de sosialt konstruerte og ideologiske rammene som er med å bestemme vår praksis som arkitekter.

Stikkord: arkitektur, tidsmessighet, idealer, diskursive prosesser.

Avhandlingsarbeidet skal ferdigstilles i desember 2007.

Veiledere: Eir Grytli (AB-fak.) , Helga Tvinnereim og Øyvind Thommassen (begge HF-fak.)

For mer informasjon om kandidaten se Reidunn Rustad CV

Public art is founded on positive expectations; town planners, architects, artists and user groups believe it will have a positive effect upon both social and aesthetic problems. Unfortunately public art does not always have the intended positive effect. A lot happens after the art is in place. Art in public places develops meaning through social interaction. The resulting meaning is often unexpected. This research is intended to be an anthropological analysis of the meaning that develops around public art. The focus will be on resulting meaning. The meaning that develops after the art has arrived; when the planners, artists and investors have left the place. The places referred to in here are found in and around 2 shopping centers in Trondheim, Norway: City Syd and Solsiden.



Research question

The intention is to focus on the social rather than aesthetic aspects of public art. Public art is a source of meaning. What processes are necessary for meaning to be established?



Keywords: shopping, public art, anthropology, agency, meaning



To be completed in April 2010.

Advisor: Eivind Kasa

More information on Ruth Woods

In many of the urban villages and settlements within Chinese cities a majority of the inhabitants are migrant workers coming from the nearby provinces.

A traditional Chinese saying goes: ‘for every measure from the top, a countermeasure at the bottom’. Is it also true about the migrants, like Sandercocks defines for other marginal groups, that : "... in response to their exclusion from mainstream planning, [they have] developed counterplanning tradition..."? (Sandercock et al.,1998)

Through this research I want to launch a series of registrations and participatory projects in Guangzhou to study migrant’s way of organizing their urban life, and question how the practice and strategies of planners can contribute to strengthen the empowerment of the migrants.

Research questions / projects:

1 In what extent do the presence and the influence of migrants transform the social and physical organization of the city?

- Study the current living conditions and tactics of survival and maintenance for migrants, and collect expressions of migrant’s reflections of their own living conditions and ways of countermovement/acts.

- Register forms of co-existence and dual reconfiguration/adjustment between the society and migrants represented by public facilities and migrants needs.

• Project 1: Documentation project -workshop based migrant work
• Project 2: House rent project - registrations by/ of migrant’s daily life
• Project 3: Facility project -registrations and migrant/student workshop

2 How can architects and planners incorporate migrants capacity of counter-planning, when designing conditions for transformative processes of urban development?

What role can architects play in generating new methods and processes for improved living conditions applicable to the constantly changing conditions of the temporary population?

Project example 1: Void project student workshop
Project example 2: House rent project Nordic/Chinese student workshops
Project example 3: Expo 2010 Shanghai Relocation: collaboration with local society

Keywords: urban labour migration, counter-planning, social inclusion and empowerment, discursive action research, tactics of resistance, China

To be completed in August 2011.

Main advisor: Hans Christie Bjønness, advisor: Maria Nyström

For more information see CV-Cecilie Andersson

The last few years we have seen a comprehensive building activity related to hospital buildings, both national and international. Traditionally hospitals have been based on serving the needs of the medical and technical staff, i.e. the needs of the permanent users, doing the work in the hospital. In recent years there has been a changing trend in cultural and ideological aspects due to hospital operation, and an increased focus at the patient, patient’s rights and participation in the treatment situation. Hospitals have moved from being merely focusing efficient treatment to a higher degree of patient focus. On this basis, the hospitals planned and built today give the expression of being founded on another fundamental attitude towards health and care than the traditional, by putting the patient in focus.

Patient focus is a concept that can be difficult to operationalize. Several of the hospitals being built today are operationalizing the patient focused ideology by establishing bed clusters (substituting the traditional corridor solution). The bed cluster is a group of patient rooms, usually 7 – 8 single rooms, creating a yard around an open work station.

Research questions

My project is studying how the establishment of bed clusters in hospitals is affecting the user groups’ physical territories in the hospital.

How is a patient focused planning contributing to a decrease in barriers around the professional life of the staff?

To what degree has a patient focused planning resulted in a better shielding of the patients personal life?

What consequenses has this for the users’ experience of quality in the building?

Keywords: hospital, usability, physical territories

To be completed in March 2009.

Advisors: Siri H. Blakstad, Geir Hansen, Tore I. Haugen

Building components often have a longer technical lifetime than the service life of the buildings they are parts of. Yet, building constructions today are usually designed in such a way that demolition and incineration, possibly crushing into fill material is the only alternative when the components have served their function. This mismatch has negative environmental consequences. If constructions were designed in a more intelligent way, components and material could be salvaged and turned into new building material.

Vernacular building systems, like the Norwegian log construction, are often dismountable and prepared for both replacement of units, remodeling, and relocation. In recent years, manufacturers of cars and electronic equipment have put ideas of planning for future reuse into today’s practice. Unfortunately we have not been able to bring any of these design principles into the industrialized building industry.

Design for salvageability focuses on optimization of construction methods and connections between components, to enable reuse of building components and materials. The overall aim is to achieve better material resource efficiency.



Objectives

- To reason for salvageable design on the basis of environmental load at the stage of finished building, by assessing what technical lifetime of building structures that are environmental justifiable according to their material composition.

- To discuss the concept of salvageability and develop a method of assessment, by identifying determining factors in the design process.

- To investigate possibilities and limitations for building materials of different material groups with respect to salvageability.

- The work uses analyses, critical reflection and case studies as methods.

Keywords

Building materials, environmental impact, closing the loop, design for disassembly/ deconstruction (DfD).



To be completed in November 2008.

Supervisors

Prof. Anne Grete Hestnes and Prof. Eir Grytli from the Department of Building Design, History and Tecnology at NTNU, together with Arch. Bjørn Berge from the Gaia Lista Architect group. The study is partly financed by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage.

Children experience space mainly through their senses and motor activity, when learning about their environment through exploration. They have an interactive relationship with their surrounding, and their body is in direct contact with the environment. Children’s experiences describe their ways of being in the world, which includes their acting, sensing, feeling and thinking. Their preferences depend not only on the physical environment, but also on the ongoing activities, the social network, and personal aspects. According to different studies, children like complex and diverse environments, which are open for changes and a variation of activities, stimulate their senses, and bring them in contact with the living world. Through learning more about children’s experience of architectural space, an additional tool for designing a qualitative environment, which provides children’s well being, might be gained.



Research questions

How do pre-school children experience and use the different places in their day-care centers, what do they like and dislike and what preferences do they have?

Keywords: children, day-care center,

To be completed in June 2008.

Advisor: Birgit Cold

For more information see CV- Christiane Johannsen

When the basic aim of institutionally provided student housing is to offer students an affordable roof over their heads, how much emphasis should there be on the architectural design of student housing beyond this basic aim?

The intention of this PhD project is to better understand which aspects influence students’ housing satisfaction, and which role architectural design can play in this context. Housing satisfaction is viewed as an important part of the experienced quality of life as a student.

Case study methodology was considered as an appropriate method to illuminate the students’ perception of selected housing projects in Norway. Qualitative interviews with inhabitants of the three case study projects were conducted. The selected case study projects represent recent, apparently innovative student housing projects. Also a quantitative survey was conducted asking students at the different campuses in the city of Trondheim about their housing preferences.

To be completed march 2008

Advisors: Svein Erik Svendsen, Eli Støa

For more information about the project please see Judith Thomson

The purpose of the PhD project is to gain knowledge and further understanding of the relationship between the user’s brief and the design of physical environment for interactions in the knowledge workplace.

The project aims to contribute the knowledge and understanding of how architects and interior designers interpret user needs into the design of knowledge workplaces. The investigations will be limited to the briefing and design stages. Furthermore, the investigations will be limited to focus on how informal meetings and interaction settings are transformed and implemented into design.

The main focus is on how instruments as ‘boundary objects’ can be used as a means of translation and may help the process to go easier. These ‘boundary objects’ are defined as half-worked created objects, artefacts and analytical concepts which facilitate the flow of resources, and which maintain a common identity across borders during the transformation phase.

Research questions

How can the transformation from the clients demand for spaces for interaction into the architectural design be managed and improved to ensure a successful result?

• What kind of different ‘boundary objects’ can be identified during the architect’s process of implementation, interpretation and translation from the project initiation and the statement of users’ needs, and further to the final design?

• How are the architects’ processes within the architect team and in team with other actors such as the client and interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams?

• What kind of different ‘boundary objects’ can be identified to ensure success in the transformation from demand to design, and why?

Keywords: knowledge production, spaces for interaction, workplace design, translation, boundary objects

To be completed in February 2008.

Advisors: Siri Hunnes Blakstad (architecture/ knowledge workplace), Reidar Gjersvik (organisation/ strategy/ knowledge production), Thomas Berker (sociology), Tore I.Haugen (facility management/ real estate)

Kari Hovin Kjølle is a researcher and a PhD candidate at the interdisciplinary KUNNE workplace (Knowledge Workplace) project at SINTEF Building and Infrastructure, Department of Buildings in Trondheim. She holds a M. Arch. from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Previous appointments include ten years as partner and managing director at Pir II Architect Office in Trondheim.

The aim of this research is to gain more knowledge about the relation between the architectural design process and information and communication technologies (ICT). Special attention is hereby paid to the architects work and interactions within the design team, and the interdisciplinary use of digital design tools.

A multi-level and descriptive framework developed for exploring and analysing the

ICT impact on processes and relations, is applied to four qualitative case-studies of European building projects implementing and interdisciplinary using BIM/3D object modelling within the design team (one main case-study, three reference studies).

The research is based on three journal articles and several conference papers.


Keywords: ICT impact, architectural design process, design team, multi-level, stories


To be completed in March 2008.


Advisors: Tore I. Haugen, Birgit Sudbø and Bjørn Otto Braaten

For more information see CV_anitamoum