The 4th seminar was arranged between 21st – 25th of March 2014 in Oslo and Tronheim. As a contrast to the previous seminars with a public lecture profile, the focus was on the practical build-design methods that the participating teams are often applying during field work. The first plart of the event consisted of an internal planning workshop for the coming South of North exhibition. The workshop was held at Various Architects, an Oslo based architecture office. The second part included a visit to a build-design workshop for the master students at NTNU Architectural Design, Form and Colour studies, led by Sami Rintala and Gro Rødne.
The exhibition workshop was prepared by collecting exhibition material from all the participating groups before the seminar. During the first workshop day the focus lay on categorizing and analyzing the collected material, and forming the key definitions for each category. The second day was devoted to discussions on the 3-dimensional design and materiality of the exhibition design. The outcome of the workshop creates a stable foundation for the coming development work during the spring.
The workshop at NTNU was organized as a part of the ongoing master course with focus on creating a Transformative Learning Space, a concept based on a current research on sustainable development education. The goal of the course is to introduce the participating students to methods of learning by doing and to a real project situation with intensive skills learning on communication, decision making, construction and documenting. Together with Ph.D Krishna Bharathi, the participating South of North members gave an introduction to the framework of sustainability in planning and architecture on a theoretical and practical level. The actual design task, a physical transformation of the students working environment, will be implemented within a few weeks after an internal design competition. An update of the outcome of the workshop will follow.
