Diploma

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

Nicholas Coates

Diploma spring 2024

The language of the long house

Last spring, I spent a few months in Brittany. I went to play boulioù (a local boule game) with the town’s elders when they started sharing their regret of no longer speaking their mother tongue: Breton. I found this testimony touching and absurd: to think that in just 50 years, the language that everyone spoke was forgotten by all.


I have always been interested in this ancient language. It was the mother tongue of my grandpar-ents, the one they used every day, the one my mom understood but never learned, the one I only heard a few times during meetings with elders. The one future generations probably will never hear.

Reassembeling the rejected

This diploma aims to search for qualities in unwanted spaces, by working with adaptive reuse of Paleet Car Park as case, a multi-storey parking and office structure located in the centre of Oslo, Kvadraturen, slated for demolition in favor of a new office building later this year. It has been an exploratory study where models have been the most important tool to effectively discover and test out simple measures to maximize the value of the structure.

All entries related to Diploma spring 2024

The language of the long house

Reassembeling the rejected

Fac(ad)ing the future