Arctic Practices: Design for a Changing World emerges at a critical juncture wherein the very stability of Arctic ecosystems hangs in a precarious balance induced, almost entirely, by humans. This volume assembles forty-six contributors—designers, educators, artists, photographers, filmmakers, some Indigenous, some residents, and some visitors to the Circumpolar North—to create a polyvocal assembly of Arctic practices. This assembly represents an attempt to deliberately depart from traditional academic frameworks that have historically privileged Western voices and epistemologies.

The contributions collected here address critical gaps in published Arctic design literature. They also represent attempts to imagine new forms of design practice that might respond to the urgency of climate change and the necessity of reconciliation. This volume hopes to open new possibilities for meaningful design interventions across northern lands, seas, skies, and ice, always mindful of both the urgency of our present moment and the weight of historical injustices that have shaped these landscapes and the lives lived with them.

Authors: Claudio Aporta, Brandon Bergem, Mari Bergset, Caitlin Blanchfield, Arlyn Charlie, Thomas Juel Clemmensen, Bert De Jonghe, AK Dolven, Jakob Exner, Nadezhda Filimonova, Jeffrey Garcia, Aniella Sophie Goldinger, Maureen Gruben, Nicholas Gulick, Magdalena Haggärde, Peter Hemmersam, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Konstantin Ikonomidis, Morgan Ip, Maaretta Jaukkuri, Caitlin Jakusz Paridy, Jessica MacMillan, Dorte Mandrup, Nicole Luke, Gisle Løkken, Helena Lennert, Akie Kono, Kyra Kordoski, Elena Krapivina, Lasse Rau, Olga Petri, Andrey N. Petrov, Susan Schuppli, Todd Saunders, Anastasia Savinova, Lola Sheppard, Sofia Singler, Inuuteq Storch, Sophy Roberts, Svetlana Romanova, Marya Rozanova-Smith, Michael Turek, Eimear Tynan, Bertine Tønseth, Mason White.

Editors: Bert De Jonghe & Elise Misao Hunchuck

Graphic Design & Cartography: Studio Folder

Research support: Transpolar Studio

Copy editing: Elise Misao Hunchuck

Proofreading: Elizabeth Kugler

Publisher: Actar Publishers

Printing and binding: Gráfiques Jou

Pages: 464

ISBN: 9781638401339

Publication date: April 2025

Image credits: Image 1: Nan Niwhazheh ti’goonch’uu - The land is our home. Photographer and author: Arlyn Charlie; Image 2: The Road of Life - An ice road on the Northern Dvina River between the city of Arkhangelsk and the island of Kegostrov in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian Federation. Photo by Nicholas Gulick and Elena Krapivina; Image 3: Kangiata Illorsua by Dorte Mandrup. Photo by Adam Mørk.

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago built on an irreducible plurality of interests and Arctic design traditions. Contesting Svalbard combines a granular understanding of the spatial implications of multinational occupation in Svalbard with a critique of the Norwegian nationalism underlying the Svalbard project. Five distinct challenges in Svalbard’s built environment are identified as fertile ground to inject a range of alternative futures, catalyzing the archipelago’s multinational character. A participatory and scenario planning approach based in design research is central to such an endeavor. In short, this study deals with and speculates about a cross-cultural, fluid, and plural set of issues and actors in an increasingly contested Arctic common.

Extra note: This study is based on six field trips to Svalbard and four years of extensive research. The participatory aspect of this study kickstarted with three co-design workshops in Longyearbyen during May 2023.

Image credits: Longyearbyen. Photo by Bert De Jonghe, May 2023.

Arctic Design is a weekly seminar course taught at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in the Fall of 2024 and at the University of Toronto in the Spring of 2025.

Description: This seminar introduces students to disciplinary debates on Arctic design, rapidly changing Arctic landscapes, and project precedents from across the Circumpolar North. The course is grounded in a historical understanding of Arctic settlements and landscapes across a range of spatial, temporal, and cultural registers. This diverse, relational, and extensive reading of a plural Arctic is an essential first layer for every designer interested in working with polar landscapes.

The first quarter of the course introduces students to the misguided assumptions and fantasies about inhabiting the Arctic’s vast and heterogeneous landscapes. This establishes a succinct introduction to the broader context surrounding the history and practice of Arctic settlement and infrastructural development. In parallel, it also introduces students to the projection of power and culture from south to north, revealing the complex and troubled history of dominant Western attitudes towards polar geographies and Arctic people groups. In response, Indigenous notions of North and the Arctic will be addressed throughout this course.

Departing from texts published in the 1960s, by architects, and in the English language, the second quarter of the course introduces students to (i) who has dominated the literature on Arctic settlement and infrastructural development (i.e., European, North American, and Soviet/Russian authors), (ii) how they have framed their work, and (iii) how their distinct cultural, social, and geographical contexts led them to identify a very different Arctic settlement/city while, surprisingly, also sharing many of the same arguments. This discussion highlights that, in the past, Arctic settlement and infrastructural development has been largely conceptualized according to national and international frameworks of urbanism, which are not unique to the region and do not adequately respond to the identity and challenges of the Arctic region.

Therefore, based on more recent academic and creative work from key authors, the third quarter of this course introduces students to contemporary approaches in Arctic design—with a particular focus to landscape-driven responses. In this, both directly and indirectly, students also gather knowledge about the Arctic’s complex and diverse climates, ecologies, and more. Following the work by authors/designers such as Joar Nango, Nicole Luke, and Eimear Tynan, among many others, this part of the course indicates that a repositioning of the Arctic design discipline is ongoing and allows for new creative input, such as that by students of this course.

As a result, the final quarter of the course explores a few unique case studies that may inspire the student in their final project. Readings will be minimal in this final module to allow students to dive deeper into a topic related to the course content. More specifically, by the end of the semester, each student is expected to develop and complete an extended visual essay on an agreed topic. All students are encouraged to produce a landscape-driven speculation about the challenges and/or future of Arctic design. This effort will be preceded by three short papers—submitted at the end of each respective module. Finally, members of the course will be expected to prepare for each week’s class by reading a selection of texts and actively contribute to discussions throughout the term.

Developed and led by: Bert De Jonghe

Special thanks to: Gary Hilderbrand and Mason White

Guests: Lisa Bloom, Maureen Gruben, Kyra Kordoski, Olga Petri, Jessica MacMillan, Konstantin Ikonomidis, Mari Bergset, Joar Nango, Brona Keenan, Bertine Tønseth, Eimear Tynan, Leena Cho, and Matthew Jull.

Image credits: Artwork by Inuvialuk artist Maureen Gruben which was discussed at length during the seminar together with the artist. Title: Moving with joy across the ice while my face turns brown from the sun (2019). Photo Kyra Kordoski.

Territorial Practices is a Master of Landscape Architecture studio-based course at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) taught in the autumn of 2023 by Eimear Tynan and Bert De Jonghe with the participation of fourteen graduate students. The course focused on high-Arctic delta environments in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where delta environments are undergoing rapid change in high-Arctic regions primarily due to rising temperatures. A range of spatial and temporal views of territories was required to address the complex environmental changes. This incorporated the mapping of Svalbard’s aerial, marine, and terrestrial territories from political, climatic, ecological, environmental, and cultural standpoints. It also required site-specific engagement on a human scale where graduate students were asked to design with a delta area in the town of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, to address the present and future needs of human and non-human stakeholders. By doing so, students developed a better understanding of the complex and entangled nature of the chosen delta landscape.

Image credits: Students explored the materials and tidal movements along the spit systems of Longyearbyen’s coast during a field trip. Photo by Eimear Tynan, August 2023.

Through the lens of urbanization, Inventing Greenland provides a broad understanding of a unique island undergoing intense transformation while drawing attention to its historical and current challenges and emerging opportunities. Geared towards architects, landscape architects, and urban planners, this book examines the local cultural, social, and environmental realities with a distinct spatial sensitivity, recognizing the diverse array of relationships that the built environment both supports and produces. By exploring Greenland as a complex and interconnected cultural and geographical space, Inventing Greenland reveals and anticipates transitional moments in the region’s highly intertwined urbanized, militarized, and touristic landscapes.

With contributions of: Bert De Jonghe (author), Charles Waldheim (foreword), and Mia M. Bennett (co-author of chapter one).

Copy Editor: Mia M. Bennett

Proofreading: Elizabeth Kugler

Publisher: Actar Publishers

Printing and binding: Arlequin

Pages: 152

IBSN: 9781638409892

Publication date: March 2022

Across the Arctic, a great deal of commercial aviation infrastructure has its roots in World War II military operations and their protraction during the Cold War.¹ Although many of these military imperatives have weakened, the path dependency of air transportation networks, which require enormous amounts of fixed capital, makes them difficult to alter.

As airpower became key to global military might in the 20th century, Greenland’s neighbor, the United States, started building airstrips and missile defense sites in the country as a matter of national security. American interest heightened after April 9, 1940, when the Nazis invaded Denmark, which had controlled Greenland since the early 18th century. With Denmark unable to send supplies to Greenland, let alone exercise sovereignty over it, the Danish ambassador to the United States disobeyed the Danish government and signed an agreement granting American access to the world’s largest island.² In addition to civilian resupply and the construction of facilities such as weather stations, ports, depots, search-and-rescue stations, and more, this agreement made it possible for the US to establish military airbases on Greenlandic soil. Greenland’s aeroscape was thus originally constructed to the needs of American military colonialism³ rather than those of Greenlanders.

Today, some Greenlandic policymakers are calling for the relocation of certain airports as both a necessary economic step and a move away from Danish and American histories. One example from eastern Greenland involves the proposed relocation of the military/civilian airport on Kulusuk Island (pop. 240) to the main population hub of Tasiilaq, 20 kilometers away (pop. 2000).⁴ Aligning Greenland’s aeroscape with centers of population and economic activity, however, could disconnect the settlements that initially arose to support American-built airports, and whose continued existence depends on their operation. As postcolonial nations work to reconfigure infrastructural networks to better match local needs, the difficulties that Greenland is encountering within this transition underscore the challenges of including communities whose origins lie in military and colonial interventions within new nation-building projects.

References: [1] M. Farish and P.W. Lackenbauer, “High Modernism in the Arctic: Planning Frobisher Bay and Inuvik,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 3 (2009): 517—44; [2] J. Rahbek-Clemmensen, and L.J. Nielsen, “The Middleman—The Driving Forces behind Denmark’s Arctic Policy,” in Handbook on Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic, (Switzerland: Springer, 2020), 77—96; [3] M. Heymann, H. Knudsen, M. L. Lolck, H. Nielsen, and C. J. Ries, “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings,” Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 33, no. 2 (2010): 11—42; [4] Stine Bendsen, Jesper Nordskilde, and Mads Paabøl Jensen, “The Transport Commission of Greenland,” Association for European Transport and Contributors, 2011.

Image credits: Image 1: The US Air Force providing fuel for Kangerlussuaq Airport, 1951, Bent Helmudt, Courtesy of the Danish Arctic Institute; Image 2: Kulusuk Airport, 2017, Bert De Jonghe.