AHO SOD Unit · Culture Based Solutions
Traditions of land care as tools for a city under pressure
The SOD unit at AHO is investigating edible green commoning at Losæter as part of Culture Based Solutions — an NFR-funded research project asking how local and traditional land-care practices generate cultural, ecological, and social value, and what it would take for them to be recognised as tools for landscape resilience.
Losæter community farm in action, Bjørvika, Oslo. Photo: [photographer]
| THE PROJECT|
AHO’s contribution to the Culture Based Solutions research project
The AHO Systems Oriented Design unit is one of four research partners in Culture Based Solutions (CbS), an NFR-funded four-year project led by NORCE. CbS grew from questions that emerged during the NatureAct project: that many of the most effective landscape interventions involve changing land-management practices and cultural relationships to land, not just placing physical structures in the landscape.
The project has an ambition to show how local and traditional land-care practices already occurring across Norway generate cultural, ecological, and social value and what it would take for those practices to be recognised and supported as tools for addressing the pressures landscapes in Norway increasingly face.
Project at a glance
| Funder | NFR — Research Council of Norway |
| Lead | NORCE |
| Duration | December 2025 to mid-2028 |
| AHO case | Losæter, Oslo |
| Active seasons | 2026 and 2027 |
| Cases total | 4 sites across Norway |
| FOUR CASE SITES |
CbS works across four Norwegian landscapes, each under a different kind of pressure
EDIBLE GREEN COMMONING IN OSLO
RESPONSIBLE: AHO & NORCE
HEATHER BURNING IN NORDHORDLAND
RESPONSIBLE: NORCE & UIB
MOUNTAIN FARMIN IN VALDRES & SOGN
RESPONSIBLE: VESTLANDSFORSKING
BERRY PICKING IN SALTEN, NORDALAND
Responsible: nordland research institute & nina
An urban commons at the edge of the city
Losæter sits on municipal land in Bjørvika, Oslo, between the Opera House, the Munch Museum, and Deichmanske Library. Oslo municipality classifies it as a nærmiljøhage: a multifunctional community garden that brings people together for cultivation, harvesting, cooking, eating, art, and open gathering on a single publicly accessible site.
Today Losæter is home to a collective of artists, local residents, refugees, and visitors who plant, harvest, and cook together. A city farmer manages the site on behalf of Oslo municipality. Nine varieties of ancient grain grow in the heritage field. The Flatbread Society bakehouse functions as a public gathering and baking space. Communal dinners are open to everyone in season.
Losæter began in 2011 not as a planning initiative but as an art project, initiated by the international collective Futurefarmers and commissioned by Bjørvika Utvikling. Art has been the engine of what it became. In 2015, farmers from over fifty Norwegian farms carried earth through the streets of Oslo to Bjørvika, a Declaration of Land Use was signed establishing the site as a commons, and that soil became the literal foundation of the heritage grain field.
The ecological and social value Losæter generates is not a property of the site — it is an emergent effect of people caring for the land together.
Direct ecological effect
Rain sponge
Because people actively tend the soil at Losæter, it absorbs rainfall during heavy weather events, reducing pressure on Oslo’s stormwater infrastructure and protecting water quality in the fjord. Sitting where the Alna river meets the sea, the site manages water that dense surrounding development cannot.
Direct ecological effect
Biodiversity stepping stone
Because the land is actively tended and diverse crops and plants are maintained through collective care, the site provides foraging habitat for pollinators and resting ground for birds within the dense development of Bjørvika, ecological function that emerges from the practice of growing, not from site design alone.
Emergent social effect
Connecting people to place, to each other, and to themselves
Through sustained shared practice, growing, harvesting, cooking, eating together, people develop a relationship to this place and to each other that urban life rarely provides. Bioregional reconnection in Thackara’s sense: not designed in, but produced by people working together on the land over time.
Understanding why the practice produces these effects — and what conditions allow the practice to happen and sustain itself — is what this project is investigating. Read more about how we will work →
The ambition for the Losæter case, co-created with the community
01
What does Losæter need to continue to thrive and reach its full potential?
Understanding the conditions, social, ecological, organisational, and political, that allow a place like this to sustain itself and grow.
02
What would it take for there to be more places like Losæter?
Exploring what structures, mechanisms, and shifts in thinking would facilitate for culture-based solutions like Losæter to be genuinely considered by those with influence over landscapes under pressure.
| HOW WE WORK |
Two growing seasons, two workshops, continuous collaboration
The work at Losæter unfolds across two growing seasons, 2026 and 2027, opened and closed by a KulturverkSted, a facilitated workshop that brings together the community, researchers, artists, and decision-makers to map, discuss, and co-design.
The direction of the work is determined with the Losæter community, not in advance of meeting them. Activities across the two seasons will be chosen for their value to the community as well as to the research. This is not an extractive process.
| OUTPUTS|
What this project could produce
Some of these are confirmed deliverables within the project framework. Others are in development. A few are possibilities we think are worth naming — outputs that would generate genuine value beyond the research itself.
Cross-case
Losæter contributes to all three
CbS Intervention Guide
The project’s primary non-academic output. A practical guide for municipal decision-makers and planners, making the case for culture-based solutions as tools that belong in the policy toolkit. Developed across all four case sites.
CbS Atlas
An art-map publication drawing on maps, place-names, text, and visual materials from all four KulturverkSteds. Edited and published through KMD at UiB. Exhibited at museums, libraries, and schools.
CbS Video
A short film introducing the concept of culture-based solutions, compiled from the workshops and participant observation across all four case sites.
Final project event
A cross-case closing event synthesising findings from all four case sites, connected to the Atlas exhibition. Venue and format TBD.
Losæter case
Confirmed deliverables
Facilitating Edible Green Commoning
A document and exhibition exploring Losæter as a model for urban culture-based solutions. Format to be determined through the research process and in dialogue with the community.
Research article
A peer-reviewed article with Losæter as the central case. Focus to emerge from the research process. Initial ideas include the role of art in sustaining places like this, the conditions enabling edible green commoning to produce emergent value, and the balance between order and chaos.
KulturverkSted II
A closing workshop at Losæter showcasing the exhibition on facilitating edible green commoning, with Losæter as the central case. Brings together community, researchers, and decision-makers.
Potential
Outputs we intend to pursue if the work supports them
Events to test and showcase exhibition materials
Smaller public moments during the two growing seasons, using emerging exhibition content to gather responses and develop the work before the closing KulturverkSted.
What is CbS?
A cross-case academic paper developing the concept of culture-based solutions from the ground up, drawing on findings from all four case sites.
Online catalogue of activities
A living digital resource documenting the practices, methods, and activities emerging from the project, accessible to communities, practitioners, and decision-makers beyond the research context.
Stunts and provocations
Interventions in public space or policy contexts that put the findings to work before the project closes. Format open.
| TEAM AND PARTNERS |
Collaborating partners
This page will be updated as the project develops. To follow the work at Losæter as it unfolds – fieldwork, student contributions, workshop findings, and outputs – see the project updates below.
