Diploma

Nicholas Coates

Erik Langdalen is a practicing architect and a professor of architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. 

 is an award-winning office specialized on the preservation and transformation of historic buildings, including the Eero Saarinen designed US Embassy in Oslo (2023), the Magnus Poulsson designed Dombås Church (2023), and the soon to be opened Karl Norum-designed Posten Moderne Museum of Contemporary Art in Trondheim, as well as a number of heritage sites across Norway. His teaching and research focus on the recent past, specializing on concrete architecture, buildings systems and components. Erik is in charge of the Re-Store course portfolio, investigating how architectural education needs to respond to the climate crises through the reuse, preservation and transformation of what is already built. Since 2021, his teaching has engaged the concept of provenance in a number of master studios and seminars. His books include 

Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice. Voices from the Archive

 (2021). He is the owner of the cultural center 

. Erik holds a Diploma of Architecture from AHO and a M.ARCH AAD from Columbia University GSAPP.

Erik Fenstad Langdalen

Diploma spring 2023

Reinterpretation: Folketeateret

Reinterpreting: Folketeateret explores how a comprehensive building analysis can expand stakeholders’ definition of a building’s significance. By highlighting different examination entries, the aim is to exemplify how alternative narratives can point to the complexity of a building’s history. The project tests a perspective of dismantling the physical building into five (theoretical) scales, where building components are isolated in advancing complexity from the fragment (the building material) to the environment (the physical context the building is placed within) – revealing how the point of view contextualises the building in different ways. The project uses Folketeateret, a building complex in Oslo, as the case study. The five-scale model Fragment: A fragment refers to the various building materials used to construct a building, including those that are made by a producer and those arranged on site. This scale examines the fragment’s material, material quality (durability, tactility, malleability, etc.), craftmanship and/or dimensions. Furthermore, the scale includes the contextual history of the fragment, both related to the building and its physical context. Element: An element is a combination of fragments that together form building components such as segments of a wall, the roof, a column, the floor slab, a window, a staircase and more. Elements can be composed of multiple materials. The outline of an element is defined in the meeting with other elements. The transition from one element to the next is observed in the change of material and/or a shift from one volume to another. For example, a façade can consist of several geometrical volumes arranged in such a way that creates a shift from the baseline of the façade. The shift can therefore distinguish two elements from each other, even if they are made of the same fragments. Architects and producers alike can design elements, which can be assembled on-site, or in a factory or workshop setting. Furthermore, the scale includes the contextual history of the element, both related to the building and its physical context. Fabric: Fabric is the spatial composition of fragments and elements where the architect’s act of assembling the different components materializes towards a functional building with an artistic expression or intension. Fabric is the scale where the building’s characteristics start to take shape: where configurations of fragments and elements are given directions and rhythm in a geometric composition. The elements become functional: walls, floors, and roofs become structural; windows let in light and give visual contact between inside and outside; stairs connect floors, etc. Fabrics are distinguished from each other by their geometric composition, where different shapes and sizes of elements create a distinct visual arrangement that separates them. Example from Folketeateret: recessed- or protruding volumes. Structure: Structure refers to the complete building and encompasses both its form and function. Fabrics are the entities that in structures are constituents in the formulation of the building’s features and characteristics, which can be defined in a typology. Structure points to the overall appearance of the exterior and to the three-dimensional layout of the building. The scale includes the re-interpretation of the architect’s holistic vision for the building as a cohesive entirety. Environment: Environment refers to the immediate context in which the building is situated, experienced, and perceived. This includes its relationship with neighbouring structures, streets, squares. The scale considers the location, orientation, and scale, and how they interact with the surrounding district. Additionally, the scale may also examine how the building’s inhabited functions and activities relate to the surrounding area. What narratives can emerge when exploring the history of a singular fragment or element, or when emphasize is set on one of the spatial characteristics of the building? Reinterpreting: Folketeateret elaborate on this through two fragments, brick and stone, and their connection to Folketeateret; and one of the spatial characteristics in the scale fabric: ”the theatre passage”. The narratives derive from examination and interpretation of archival material, asking where a building’s significance can be defined additionally to how we conventionally describe a building’s architectural historical value. Conventional is here understood as the narratives describing a building’s relation to the architectural expression it has been defined as having or taken inspiration from in hindsight; descriptions where the building as a historical structure is analysed in comparison with other buildings of the same era and with similar architectural language. When examining a building from alternative perspectives, other questions of significance emerge. The hypothesis is that by surveying the variety of contexts and narratives, stakeholders can be more precise about which aspects of the building’s history have significance and are of interest to preserve. Whether listed or not, buildings in use are continuously adapted through design alterations to accommodate a contemporary function. These design alterations add layers of narratives to the building’s history. Which role can these narratives have in the discussion about significance? Moreover, how can these narratives be activated? Accompaning the project is an essay called ”Reinterpretation: A Comment to the Folketeateret Listing Document”, which discusses what the heritage authorities imply when a building is preserved for its architectural historical value; a critical stand is taken on the word’ tilbakeføring’ (to revert); and the essay discusses further what happens when architectural quality is summed up in a building’s response to defined architectural styles

The tool factory

Industrial buildings are often given a new life through re–programming when the initial purpose of a building is defunct. Their facade often listed, but their interior re-imagined with program as the spatial generator. When seeking to understand such build-ings, we tend to focus on the representation of the facade, while the discussion of the interior spaces is often left untouched.
The Tool Factory is a project that utilizes spatial observations combined with archival research as a generator for understanding Redskapsfabrikken, an old industrial building in Nydalen, rather than a program–driven outset.
In doing so the project identifies characteristic components in the building, and uses these to develop a new set of tools for understanding the factory, that hold in them the building’s rich history and inherent logic.

Living Together - Towards a Third Housing Sector in Oslo

The narrative of this diploma is twofold and will deal with two topics. Firstly, it seeks to explore the spatial possibilities of an obso-lete and empty health-care building from 1939 and how this can be transformed into dwellings. Secondly, it will discuss alterna-tive forms of housing in relation to the third housing sector in Oslo, and challenge the ways in which we think about the concept of dwellings and ways to live in the city.

Camp Objects

A Swiss study conducted in 2021 suggests that children and youth who participate in week-long summer camps demonstrate increased altruism, indicating a greater willingness to help others. In light of the post-pandemic era, characterized by destroyed habitats and declining democracies, the importance of camp activities is more critical than ever before. This raises the question of what the future of camps entails.

Reinterpreting: Folketeateret

Exploring the Gas Station

The number of gas stations in Norway is in rapid decline. In central Oslo, only 17 are remaining. Considering the trend of the last decades, it is safe to say that these buildings are well under the risk of being demolished. If so, 17 unique buildings that are deeply attached to a specific epoch of human history will be erased from the cityscape.


Is there a way for these stations to survive the death of the gasoline era? On what grounds could a preservation then be based? What are the potentials that exist in the architectural, spatial, and social aspects of these buildings, and how could these be explored as well as valued through a transforma-tion?
Gas stations are unique buildings. Not only do they possess distinguishable and highly functionalist architecture, but they have become symbols of mo-dernity and the era of petroleum, that now possibly is stepping into its final phase. In Norway, they arguably also carry a particular value as represen-tations of the economic affluence the industry has created during last centuries. From planning, extraction and shipping, gas stations become the last stage of the process where the prosperity is handed over to the people. Almost synonymous with the era of petroleum, they have a very particular place in time and are important architectural representations of the age of oil.
I have located what I saw as fairly unique key aspects of the gas station: its layers of social culture surrounding it, its colourful expressions, its constant flow and motion, and its difficult relation to the soil. When preserving a gas station, how could these be used through architecture and new programs?
As a way of testing out interventions, I focused on an “archetypal” gas station located in Vinderen in north-western Oslo. While Shell still is both ow-ning and operating it, I created a scenario that could take place when or if they choose to move out, where Oslo Municipality steps in as the new owner.


Although this project is focusing on one station in particular, it should be seen as a test for the gas station in general. The purpose has been to explore how the key aspects could be translated into architecture and program and still have the possibility to be adapted to other stations.


Through working with soil remediation, movement, and colour, I have proposed a strategy that is rooted in community engagement and social activity. How could the local community be a part of the shaping of what the post-petroleum era looks like? By providing small architectural tools, the project
aims at creating conditions for the site to be in constant motion and change, while remaining accessible, social, and constantly reactivated by colour.

Limeworks - Recovering a Material History

This diploma is an exploration of the field of industrial building heritage and re-use through the case of Siporexhallen, an obsolete remains of a former cement factory located in the northeastern part of Gotland, Sweden. The project aims to shed light on how we relate to what Jane Hutton calls reciprocal landscapes and material origin through recovery of local material history. Extending local cultural tradition and engaging contemporary debates around the unsustainability of cement production, the diploma proposes acupunctural interventions to the former factory through reuse of mass produced materials left on site.

Lys i nord – Norske hus

Den brendte jords taktikk
Under siste kvartal av andre verdenskrig ble innbyggerne i Nord-Troms og Finnmark tvangsevakuert i tysk regi med den brendte jords taktikk. Dette innebar at all bebyggelse i landsdelen ble bombet og brendt til jorden.
Da krigen kom til ende var innbyggerne uten hus og hjem hvor kun ruiner kunne minne om det som tidligere hadde vært. En hel landsdel med enorme ødeleggelser måtte gjenreises, og dette med begrensede midler og tid. Boligdirektoratet inviterte derfor arkitekter fra hele landet til å delta i en konkurranse for å utforme typehus som kunne oppføres hurtig og enkelt. Det endte til slutt med en katalog utvalgte typehus. De fleste arkitektene kom sørfra, da det var stor mangel på arkitekter i Nord-Norge på denne tiden.

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