AH4081 The Scandinavian Art of Building and Design: Identity and Myth

Academic year

2025 to 2026 Semester 2

Further information on which modules are specific to your programme.

Key module information

SCOTCAT credits

30

The Scottish Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SCOTCAT) system allows credits gained in Scotland to be transferred between institutions. The number of credits associated with a module gives an indication of the amount of learning effort required by the learner. European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits are half the value of SCOTCAT credits.

SCQF level

SCQF level 10

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) provides an indication of the complexity of award qualifications and associated learning and operates on an ascending numeric scale from Levels 1-12 with SCQF Level 10 equating to a Scottish undergraduate Honours degree.

Availability restrictions

Not automatically available to General Degree students

Planned timetable

tba

This information is given as indicative. Timetable may change at short notice depending on room availability.

Module coordinator

Dr S M Kallestrup

Dr S M Kallestrup
This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module Staff

Dr S Kallestrup

This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module description

This course explores the distinctive nature of Scandinavian architecture and design, and their role in fostering specific ideas about Nordic identity. While the grouping of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland is more accurately described as ‘Nordic’, the term ‘Scandinavian Design’ emerged in the 1950s as a carefully curated branding concept with associated mythologies that have remained powerful to the present day. This course engages with these mythologies – and their earlier origins – as manifested in the built, painted and designed environment. We begin in the late nineteenth century with an examination of emerging ideas of national identity in the rich forms of National Romanticism, before moving on to study architectural Expressionism, Nordic Classicism, and Scandinavia’s distinctive form of architectural modernism known as ‘Functionalism’ or the ‘Scandinavian synthesis’. Binding modernist innovations with particular Nordic ideas about social equality, the home and the environment, Scandinavian architecture and design have gained a reputation for being ‘democratic’, ‘authentic’ and ‘humane’, in touch with the modern world but also with age-old craft traditions and the Nordic landscape. In the latter part of the course we will interrogate the validity of such myths, together with the mechanisms of their creation, and examine their legacy for so-called ‘New Nordic’ and the designers of today.

Assessment pattern

Coursework = 100%

Re-assessment

1 x Written Assignment to be agreed by the Board of Examiners

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact

1 x 2 hour lecture (x 11 weeks); 1 x 1 hour seminar (x 11 weeks); 2 office hours (x12 weeks); field trip

Scheduled learning hours

41

The number of compulsory student:staff contact hours over the period of the module.

Guided independent study hours

259

The number of hours that students are expected to invest in independent study over the period of the module.

Intended learning outcomes

  • recognise and understand key works of Nordic architecture and design from 1890 to the present day, as well as the critical literature relating to them
  • think critically about works, movements and ideas, as well as their political, social and artistic contexts
  • apply appropriate concepts and theoretical apparatus to the discussion of material.
  • understand developments in individual countries, as well an ability to interrogate wider concepts of candinavian’ or ‘Nordic’ identity
  • investigate unfamiliar or little-studied material