Architecture for Landslide prone landscapes
Research project on building principles in landslide, rockfall and avalanche prone terrain
title: Shaped by nature location: Vestlandet, Norway timeframe: 2023 - ongoing institutional context: Diploma project, Bergen Arkitekthøgskole
Core question:
How can residential structures be designed to provide long-term safety and habitability in officially mapped landslide zones, without erasing settlement patterns or local building culture?
Relevance
Increasing rainfall in Western Norway is intensifying landslides and rockfall, putting existing settlements under growing pressure. Climate projections and recent events show that these risks will increase rather than disappear.
This research positions architecture as an active part of climate adaptation: developing spatial and material strategies that improve safety, support continued settlement, and respond to the planning challenges created by mapped hazard zones.
The work aligns with objectives and international sustainability agendas, particularly UN Sustainable Development Goals 11 (Sustainable Communities) and 13 (Climate Action).
Problem: Risk, Rainfall, and Planning Tension
In Vestlandet, steep terrain combined with increasing precipitation has made landslides and rockfall a persistent risk. National hazard maps are essential tools, but they often place long-established settlements in zones where development and maintenance become difficult or impossible.
This creates a tension between safety regulations, municipal responsibility, and the lived reality of people who continue to inhabit these landscapes. The research addresses this tension by asking how architecture can contribute to safer, more resilient ways of living with geological risk.
By shifting our perspective on these events, we can use them as a resource once we realize the potential of the material itself.
Landscape and Case Study, Stadlandet
The research is grounded in a specific coastal mountain landscape on Stadlandet, where exposed weather conditions, steep slopes, and flat valley floors meet. In Hoddevik, houses, roads, and farmland exist in close proximity to mapped rockfall paths.
This landscape is treated not as an isolated site, but as a representative condition found across large parts of Vestlandet.
Historic context: Architectural protection in mountain landscapes
Mountain regions have a long tradition of protective structures for avalanches, rockfall, and slope instability. In Switzerland, these have been systematically integrated into settlements. In Norway, historic stone structures show local, pragmatic responses, but real architectural frameworks for protection has been rare. As climate-driven instability increases, these alpine precedents provide valuable lessons for Norwegian landscapes.
Older protective structures in Norway
Design Principles and methodology
The architectural principles focus on the use of heavy, protective structures—primarily stone—combined with lighter inhabitable elements. Stone provides mass, durability, and resistance, while wood enables flexibility and domestic scale.
These principles are informed by historical stone structures in the landscape and by experimental studies of geometry, stiffness, and buildability.
Recent buildings in Switzerland
Architectural Framework, Safety, and Regulation
The research proposes an architectural framework for building in landslide- and rockfall-prone landscapes where safety, habitability, and regulation are treated as a single design problem. The work develops a method for reading terrain, identifying rockfall trajectories, and positioning protective structures accordingly.
Heavy, protective stone structures form the primary line of defence, while lighter inhabitable elements provide domestic space and flexibility. Operating within mapped hazard zones, the framework addresses safety not only as a technical requirement, but as a spatial and lived condition shaped by mass, enclosure, and clarity.
Transferability
While site-specific, the research proposes architectural principles that can be adapted to other landslide, rockfall, and avalanche prone regions in Vestlandet and similar landscapes, allowing municipalities and designers to respond to local conditions.
Next phase
Further development requires collaboration across disciplines. The work is suitable for applied research, pilot building projects, and partnerships with municipalities, engineers, and funding bodies interested in climate adaptation and resilient settlement.
Deepening structural testing
Regulatory alignment
Development from concept to a clean, real situation prototype.
Collaboration
This research establishes an architectural framework for inhabiting skred-prone terrain. It is intended to evolve beyond a single site into a transferable system adapted to different landscapes, regulations, and material constraints.
The project is open to collaboration and external support to move from research to implementation.
For collaboration, or more information, please contact david@atelierfercak.no