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Norway: Arctic critical cartographies 2019

In collaboration with
Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo (AHO) – The Oslo School of Architecture & Design
AHO – Tromsø Academy of Landscape and Territorial Studies

Funded by
Delft Deltas, Infrastructures & Mobility Initiative (DIMI)

Involved teachers
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin – Assistant Professor TU Delft
Emily Aquilina – Student Assistant
Daniele Cannatella – Post-doc / Geert van der Meulen – Junior Researcher TU Delft

Involved IE Design students
Marijne Kreulen (Urbanism)
Nicole Garcia Vogt (Urbanism)
Prinka Anandawardhani (Urbanism)
Malavika Gopalakrishnan (Urbanism)
Judit Taraba (Urbanism)
Ingrid Staps (Urbanism)
Liao, Yi-Chieh (Urbanism)
Yitang Kao (Landscape Architecture)
Maria Jose Zuniga (Landscape Architecture)
Li Qian (Landscape Architecture)
Man-Chuan Lin (Landscape Architecture)
Carolina Sanchez Barbero (Architecture)
Annette Heinen (TIL)
Abel Buijtenweg (TIL)
Reyzha Zaninshi (TIL)
Raphael Nassar (TIL)
Mike Band (TIL)

Understanding of complexity, otherness and change.

“In the Norwegian Arctic, relating the topography and climate becomes an essential skill in settling and dwelling. The settlements undergo a constant negotiation with conditions one cannot be indifferent about.

In a landscape where the wind shapes the trees, the air-scape is always present. In a landscape where the mountains become high walls, a hard-scape is not something man-made, but something built by nature itself. Where the ocean starches out the sea-scape to a vast and materialized fluctuation of highs and lows, the situation is not just a constant, but an ever-changing and ever-present character, in whatever spatial relation. Nature and landscape are present at every moment of people’s life.

Today, with expanding urbanization, intensified densification and surroundings for people increasingly constituted by the parameters of the man-made, the attention towards, and curiosity of a landscape and its role for framing a settlement, become more and more apparent. Thus, it is not that weird that attention reorientates, and that latitudes like those found in Lofoten, Trømso, and Hammerfest suddenly feel relevant for a broader discourse of planning, far beyond the Arctic region.

In places where nature is as pervasive as in Lofoten, Trømso, and Hammerfest, one must recognize its strength, but also acknowledge how the nature-culture sphere frames a vulnerable socio-spatial situation dependent on conditions of humble negotiations between nature and culture. To dwell complexity, otherness and change is, in this situation, fundamental.” (Adapted from Haggarde & Lokken, 2018)

The project focuses on past, present and future coastal infrastructure development in the Norwegian Arctic, where fishery and oil industries shaped its wealth and culture. A geo-political/ territorial project characterised by the power relation between man and nature – now evermore under pressure/ instability led by extreme climatic shifts and the consequent expected access to new resources and logistics routes.