On the Collective Theme

Norway—a country formed of various stones, metals, and minerals— has a long tradition of extracting natural resources. It is—however—the 1969 discovery of oil and gas reserves that has produced Norway's unprecedented wealth. While the petroleum industry is still an essential pillar supporting Norway’s prosperity, it is anticipated that in the near future the country will move beyond the extraction of oil and gas. A new focal point for future economic development is likely the tourism industry, arguably one of the world’s largest and expanding industries.

While the tourism industry in Norway is already steadily growing—with a strong increase in foreign visitors in recent years—the majority of touristic consumption is from Norwegians themselves. While the government has welcomed and incentivized the growth of the tourism industry at large through marketing campaigns and a lack of tourist taxes until now, similarly one of the major, acknowledged challenges on a national level is the unequal distribution of tourism-related activities across the country, and throughout the year. The Norwegian government proposes a “high yield/low impact” principle to spread and diversify tourism in time, space, and offering.

Thirteen individual contributions are spread across three sites: Bergen, Kvitfjell, and Andøya, each respectively representative of the fjord, the mountain and the island, three geological condition that define tourism in Norway. Structured according to both the meteorological and touristic seasons, each contribution rethinks both the spatial relationships between the tourism industry’s “front and back stages,” along with its “high yield and low impact” on the built environment.

On the Individual Contributions

Thirteen individual architectural contributions—a flagship store, an architecture institute, a ministry, a cruise terminal, a catalog house, a train station, a charging station, a cabin, a royal palace, a hotel, a visitor center, a space complex, and an itinerant circus—will be designed in relation to the tourism industry in Norway.

Teaching Team

Salomon Frausto, Ludo Groen, and Benjamin Groothuijse

Thesis Examination Committee

Dick van Gameren, Kees Kaan, Daniel Rosbottom, Paul Vermeulen, and Nathalie de Vries

Guest Critics

Anne Kockelkorn, Jonas Nørsted, Ute Schneider, and Léa-Catherine Szacka

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Students

Santiago Ardila, Juan Benavides, Daniella Camarena, Stef Dingen, Marco Fusco, Jack Garay Arauzo, Theodora Gelali, Shaiwanti Gupta, Sheng-Hao Hsu,Marianthi Papangelopoulou, Felipe Quintero, Gent Shehu, and Siyuan Wang.