VACANCIES AT BERGEN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) is happy to announce that we are in search of interested and engaged teachers for 3 new four year fixed term positions.
We look for active practitioners with teaching experience and with an urge to explore the fields of architecture and planning in investigative teaching together with the students and fellow teachers at BAS. Each teacher is to influence the curriculum with their approach, as part of a collegium practicing a constant debate, finding a path for the considerate changes of the education. We are small, we have a history to treasure and we have a will to evolve together with each new voice.
Through the new positions, we seek new teachers with competence equal to professor or associate professor that are experienced, committed and explorative in their perspectives within practice and teaching.
The three positions will focus on:
1 Making and the workshops (APP)
2 Landscape and Ecology (APP)
3 Artistic exploration (DAV)
Further explanations of the acronyms APP, TTA, DAV, KTF can be found in the school’s web page (study plan). In short they stand for: APP: Architecture, planning and projecting, TTA: Technology, Technique and Administration, DAV: Den Andre Verda/ the other world (artistic explorations), KTF: Complementary Theoretical Subjects

SITUATING TEACHING AT BAS
Bergen School of Architecture is a private University College which offers an accredited study in Architecture with a scope of 300 ECTS credits. The degree Master in Architecture is awarded by completion of the 5-year professional study. The school has about 150 students and admit 30 new students every year for 1st year and about 20 more for Erasmus exchange and others for start in the master-program. Our students are engaged in their teaching environment, pursue initiatives and are committed and hardworking throughout their study. While the three first years are mainly taught in Norwegian, the two last years are entirely taught in English. Both English and Scandinavian are working languages. The new teachers can expect to relate to both bachelor and master level.
The school is situated in a fodder factory from 1958 and students and teachers at the school must be able to adapt to unconventional settings and challenging physical conditions. The premise provides a location with a huge freedom to facilitate initiatives in large and unconventional spaces, find room for activities, and provide extensive workshop facilities and views overlooking a historic neighbourhood and development areas. The big landscape with mountains and sea is all in vicinity.
As a teacher at BAS you will be part of an international pool of architects, artists, engineers and researchers from social and physical sciences teaching specific projects or appointed for various fixed term positions. In an average year, we enrol about 30 teachers engaged for smaller and bigger teaching modules.
The contracted teachers must expect to take on study-administrative tasks according to need and relevant regulations. This includes possible participation in the study quality committee, regular teacher meetings, the board and the admission processes. In addition to scientific and academic qualifications the appointment procedure will also take into account past practical experience along with administrative and other qualifying experience.
Salary will be set according to the state regulative based on qualifications/experience.
Applicants for this position should familiarize themselves with the following regulations and guidelines:
Regulations on appointments and promotion in teaching and research positions (in Norwegian only): http://www.lovdata.no/for/sf/kd/xd-20060209-0129.html
Guidelines available for the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions [in Norwegian only): http://www.uhr.no/ressurser/veiledninger/opprykksordninger
BAS wants its permanent staff to reflect the diversity of the demographics in society. We strive for a gender balance in our teaching staff and encourages females to apply for the positions.

TEACHING APPROACH
Bergen School of Architecture was founded in 1986 based on the architectural approach of Open Form, as formulated by Oscar Hansen at the Warsaw Academy of Arts and developed in Norway by his student and the school’s founder, Svein Hatløy. Open Form is open in the sense of allowing and enabling open and participatory architecture. It is also open in the sense that individuals are given the opportunity to create their own situations and their own continuations.
The concept of Sustainable was introduced as a common theme for all teaching in the 2009 strategic plan. For BAS it is important to challenge the sustainability discourse relating to needs, historical contexts, the natural environment, resources, energy and climate, while promoting and supporting a notion of sustainability that is more strongly rooted in the needs of society.
We commit to shape a study that challenges the students through inquiries, agencies and actions that provides experiences and question discourse. The students engage with relevant situations in collaborations with various stakeholders within society, management, research, planning and construction. Essential parts of our study is situated in the field where considerations on how our approaches are anchored in the landscape, the vernacular, the building traditions, materials and a wider field of thinking of groundedness and sustainability is crucial. We engage with the landscape, settlements and communities through a mixture of analysis, 1:1 implementations and practical work. The school initiates real, experimental building projects, on site, meant to last. Through these approaches, we commit to be a relevant and experimental part of the profession that elaborates on materials, constructions, use of resources, critical thinking and socio-spatial attitudes.
Teachers at BAS assign to teach and build up courses. We encourage explorative teaching with a research focus, critically engaging in relevant subjects in society. We engage in collaborations with various stakeholders, where challenges are addressed and try to find platforms for funding that can take the projects from ideas to a broader discussion in the public realm through exhibitions, publications, realizations or other means.
For further info on strategic direction and details on teaching approach we refer to the strategy plan, found in English and Norwegian translation on our web page.

FRAMING THE POSITIONS
The positions require that the candidates hold a high professional level in theory and/or practice and are able to contextualize this in relation to architecture, planning, and artistic expressions. We look for teachers who sees potential in exploring situations, have experience in analytical work and can document relevant practical-pedagogical competence grounded in education or teaching.
While the two last years of the study is taught in English, we also depend on having some teachers with a local anchoring and a robustness related to Norwegian language and
familiarity with the local building conditions amongst our teaching staff. We will therefore ask the candidates to consider in what way they are able to engage within our situated discourse.
The new positions require competence equal to professor or associate professor. BAS will conduct an assessment for the relevant candidates based on documented practice, academic and artistic production for relevant applicants who have not already been awarded their competence. Documented competence in relevant educational theory and practice from teaching and tutoring is required. Alternatively, necessary pedagogic training must be conducted alongside the preliminary teaching at BAS.
At BAS no teachers should work more than 50% at the school to allow the practice to inform the relevance of the teaching. The attitudes and approaches in your practice therefore represent an important asset in your teaching.
The vacancies available are 20%, 30% and 50% positions, and fixed for 4 years with the option of extending the contract for a further 4 year period. Depending on the overall competence and teaching capacity of the candidate, the school will be in dialogue with the relevant applicants to decide if the position should be 20, 30 or 50%.
Position 1: Making /workshop (APP)
50% position for an engaged practitioner to teach with an emphasis on the making.
BAS is announcing a call for a position connected to the workshop facilities.
We are looking for a person with interest and competencies in transmitting knowledge around making and/or fabricating with a high level of understanding of materials and their manipulation.
BAS is an architecture school with a strong focus not only on the traditional crafts, but also on artistic explorations with all the possibilities that interacting with materiality may bring to a design process. A high level of crafts not only in architectural model making, but also in 1:1 architectural and artistic explorations is an idea that the school would like to strengthen through this position.
The main task of this position is to support our students in their working processes with advice and knowledge related to making as well as through providing a safe and accessible workshop environment.
BAS is a small school and while our janitor conducts the maintenance of our workshop, it will be part of this position to participate in the care taking of the machines and tools. This person should be able to operate autonomously: order in spare parts and communicate with the companies delivering machines for the workshop. The school is constantly developing its facilities and depending on the profile of the applicant, there is potential for evolving the focus of the facilities in dialog with the schools teaching program.
Our facilities include a wood workshop, a sawmill, a metal workshop, a darkroom, a CNC machine, as well as a laser cutter. Some of these facilities are student initiated and also managed and maintained by students. We expect the person holding the wrokshop position to be a contact person to these groups and to support them.
The work place for this position is at the school and we require a person that takes residency in Bergen. Working language is Norwegian with a basic knowledge of English.
The person holding this position should expect to teach in all the five years of our study, including diploma, and should be prepared to carry through planning and teaching of independent courses as well as working in teams with other teachers in various modules.
BAS was grounded on Open Form thinking and we welcome an engagement and a challenge of this within and beyond the discourse, as well as considerations on how our approaches are anchored in the landscape, the vernacular, the building traditions, materials and a wider field of thinking of groundedness and sustainability. We want the students to explore how they can cope with complexity, establish reflection and alternative perspectives through your teaching.
We are open to applicants from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, and are eager to hear how you consider your field of interest/practice to align with and/or challenge the teaching and grounding of BAS.
We encourage female applicants.
Position 2: Landscape and Ecology (APP)
A 20%/ 30% position for an engaged practitioner to teach within the fields of Landscape and Ecology
The Bergen School of Architecture seeks a teacher for a four-year position in landscape architecture. The main focus for this position is on the relationship between landscape and contemporary urban issues and on developing expertise in landscape planning questions related to the sustainable evolution of natural, transformed and urbanized environments. Integrating landscape ecology into rural and urban planning is in the core area of the professorship.
This teaching position will primarily teach landscape architecture to develop an approach to a natural/cultural landscape and the design of the built environment with particular emphasis on urban design, urban ecologies and landscape urbanism. This implies the understanding of the city as constructed environment of interconnected and ecologically rich conditions and promotes systems-based thinking and design strategies. The exploration of the relationships of human and nonhuman organisms in rural and urban areas, and the effects of these relationships on the fluxes of energy, materials, and information within rural/urban systems and between urban and nonurban systems should be a specific interest of the candidate.
BAS is an architecture school that combines and promotes specific education and multidisciplinary interactions where landscape architecture and urbanism are integrated. The professor will work in collaboration with other teaching staff of the school.
Candidates should have a professional degree in Landscape Architecture or equivalent experience through practice, teaching and/or research. Furthermore, we seek applicants who are open to collaborative efforts and are able to communicate easily with colleagues and students and have a specific interest in conducting project- and research-based teaching.
The person holding this position should expect to teach in all the five years of our study, including diploma, and should be prepared to carry through planning and teaching of shorter independent courses as well as working in teams with other teachers in various modules. Work experience in inter-disciplinary collaborations and former experience in teaching collaborations should be mentioned and will be an important grounding of the position where much of the teaching is project based and done in teacher teams.
We are open to applicants from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, and are eager to hear how you consider your field of interest/practice to align with and/or challenge the teaching and grounding of BAS.
We encourage female applicants.
Position 3: Artistic Exploration (DAV)
A 20%/ 30% position for an engaged practitioner to teach within the fields of DAV
Bergen School of Architecture seeks a practising visual artist for a 4 year 20% / 30% Professorship in DAV. Translated as ‘the other world’, DAV signifies the artistic approach that forms a central plank of the school’s ethos. It is both complimentary and autonomous, integrated and indefinitely other, within a school that promotes multidisciplinary interaction.
DAV should bring out what is latent in the student, fostering sensibilities, intuitions and independence of thought. The appointee will work across all years of the school in developing the visual languages and skills that are fundamental to a reflective, critical and imaginative practise.
Applicants will unify critical theory with practise, and be competent within a range of media and materials through which students can access a similar breadth of thinking processes and approaches.
Candidates should have an MA in visual arts and demonstrate a critical engagement with contemporary art, as well as appropriate teaching experience.
The person holding this position should expect to teach in all the five years of our study, including diploma, and should be prepared to carry through planning and teaching of shorter independent courses as well as working in teams with other teachers in various
modules. Work experience in inter-disciplinary collaborations and former experience in teaching collaborations should be mentioned and will be an important grounding of the position where much of the teaching is project based and done in teacher teams.
We are open to applicants from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, and are eager to hear how you consider your field of interest/practice to align with and/or challenge the teaching and grounding of BAS.
We encourage female applicants.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE APPLICATIONS
Please submit:
A letter of intent
-Describe how you would translate what we look for related to your experience and field of interest for the specific position you apply for.
-Describe how your practice can inform your teaching. We are interested in how you have bridged your interest field with teaching in the past and thoughts on how your engagement should be accomplished into the teaching at BAS.
-We would like to know how you like to work and what collaborations you have taken part in that you find relevant to mention in this application.
An extensive documentation of architectural/ artistic/ scientific / educational works
– A documentation of works/ list of works. The works may be architectural engineering, artistic, scientific, pedagogical development works or other relevant work. Must contain a description of the applicant’s role in the projects.
– A thorough representation of 10 selected works (May be sent by post also if the remaining application is submitted digitally).
CV/ Academic CV
– Include praxis, work engagements and teaching experiences.
– Include a lists of architectural/artistic works and/or scientific works and/or pedagogical development or other relevant work.
– The complete list of publications with information on where the work is published.
Certificates and diplomas
Submit reference letters and contact info for minimum two persons from former engagements that the committee might contact.
Applications written in English or Scandinavian languages are accepted, but you should expect the interviews and trial lecture to be held in English.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: 6th December 2020
Submit to:
BAS; adm@bas.org (mail title: Vacancies BAS + name of applicant)
Large attachments can be sent via Wetransfer or similar digital services
Or by regular mail:
Bergen School of Architecture, PO Box 39, 5841 Bergen, Norway
(Please submit 5 copies of your application with attachments)

FURTHER PROCESS
The school will appoint two committees that will go through the applications; one internal group with teacher-, student- and management representatives that will look at all applications for a first selection. The selected candidates will then face a second evaluation by the external qualification committee that will assess candidates for professor or associate professor competence. In last round, selected applicants will be invited for an interview and trial lecture at the school.
The appointments will be made by the board based on recommendations by the evaluation committees.
Commencement date to be agreed upon between school and candidate. We expect internal process to be finalized before summer 2021 for start-up in autumn 2021.
For more information/further inquiries please contact:
Ingunn Tepstad, head of office at the administration: ingunn@bas.org
Cecilie Andersson, rector: ca@bas.org