Description: This design research project investigates new approaches to integrating disaster risk reduction strategies into Arctic urban planning and architecture, with a particular focus on tsunami risk in Greenland. It explores spatial strategies, architectural typologies, and planning frameworks that address high-consequence, low-frequency events such as tsunamis—a field that could collectively be described as tsunami urbanism. The Uummannaq region of western Greenland serves as a highly relevant case study due to its documented exposure to tsunami hazards (e.g., in Nuugaatsiaq, June 17, 2017) and its unique Arctic context.

The project was initiated through a research trip to Uummannaq and Qaarsut in January 2026 and subsequently advanced through participation in the 2nd International Workshop on Seismic Resilience of Arctic Infrastructure and Social Systems. Held on 4–5 June 2026 at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iceland, the workshop was supported by the National Science Foundation and brought together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of Arctic resilience, infrastructure, and disaster risk reduction. Further design development will take place during the intensive three-week Arctic Design Summer School (3–21 August 2026), organised by Transpolar Studio.

Image Credit: This section presents a collection of existing strategies identified in the current literature on tsunami risk, disaster resilience, and Arctic settlement planning. These precedents serve as a foundation for further design exploration and the development of context-specific responses for vulnerable Arctic communities. Drawing by Transpolar Studio, 2026.

Description: Inspired by Ralph Knowles’ Solar Envelope (1976), this project investigates how a single fundamental environmental factor can shape urban and architectural form. Rather than focusing on the sun, the project centers on snow (specifically its movement through wind) and explores how snow can function as a generative design force. Through the lens of snowdrift formation, the project develops new architectural and urban typologies informed by snow as a primary shaping agent.

The motivation is both practical and urgent. Snow removal is costly, snow often accumulates in undesirable locations, and significant energy and emissions are expended on construction and maintenance strategies designed to resist extreme weather. This raises a critical question: can cities be designed more intelligently by working with natural forces, rather than against them, through climate-responsive and scientifically grounded design?

This interdisciplinary and speculative project seeks to address that question. By combining computational analysis with both virtual simulations and physical testing at a 1:1 scale, design development and scientific inquiry proceed in parallel. The project aims to advance new approaches to urban form in the circumpolar North, proposing architectures that collaborate with snow and wind to improve snow management efficiency and reduce operational burdens. In doing so, it positions itself as a critical contribution to contemporary design discourse.

Team: s.ap arkitektar, Transpolar Studio, Veðurvaktin ehf

Test site: Húsavík, northeast Iceland

Funding: The Icelandic Design Fund, 2026

Image caption and credit: An excerpt of a series of drawings made during the research phase of this project, summarizing existing approaches to snowdrift. This specific drawing illustrates the use of snow fences to shape snowdrift formations. Drawing produced by Transpolar Studio.

The ongoing Nuummi Sammisassaqartitsivik (Nuuk Activity Plaza) project is a participatory design initiative that explores alternative futures for a central site in Nuuk, adjacent to the Katuaq Cultural Center. The project involves multiple rounds of community engagement—including youth councils—to investigate, co-design, and activate a currently vacant plot in the heart of the city.

More information will be provided as the project evolves.

Client: Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq

Image caption: A glimpse into the productive workshop session with the Nuuk Youth Council on June 3, 2026. During the workshop, Greenlandic youth contributed to shaping the future of the Nuummi Sammisassaqartitsivik (Nuuk Activity Plaza) project through discussions and feedback on a range of design proposals. Special thanks to the participants and facilitators: 12 members of the Nuuk Youth Council (6 girls and 6 boys, aged 12–16), Ditte Hartmann Christensen, Ane Marie Ottosen, Aka Binzer-Johnsen, and Karen Mølgaard Rasmussen. Concept drawings by Transpolar Studio: Bert De Jonghe, Zak Jacobi, and Anne Ignatiussen. Venue: Nuuk Rådhuset, Greenland.

This Spring 2026 Urban Planning and Design Option Studio at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design explores the potential of Greenlandic rock flour (“gletsjermel” in Danish) – a byproduct of natural glacial erosion – as a transformative resource for sustainable development in Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat in Greenlandic). Minik Rosing – World-renowned geologist, Greenland-native, and Professor at the University of Copenhagen – has published groundbreaking work that examines how the fine mineral powder, created by the grinding action of glaciers against bedrock in Greenland, contains rich nutrients that can regenerate depleted soils worldwide and bind CO2 from the atmosphere. This type of rock flour, sometimes also referred to as glacier flour, is exceptionally rich in potassium, phosphorus, and other minerals essential for plant growth. As global climate change accelerates glacial melt in Greenland, massive deposits of this material are being exposed, offering a potential solution to soil degradation and food security challenges around the world.

The studio project investigates how glacier flour, and more specifically its harvesting, may have significant impacts on the urban development of Greenland’s capital city, Nuuk, while simultaneously analysing its relationship with smaller sites across the Nuuk Fjord (Nuup Kangerlua in Greenlandic). Specifically, the studio details the intertwined nature of responsible extraction practices, urban development in a fragile Arctic landscape, and Inuit economic autonomy.

The studio involves a study trip to Nuuk from 22 to 26 February, 2026. The site visit is aimed at enabling the students to establish a deeper understanding of Inuit culture and Greenlandic urban landscapes.

Note: The studio is led by COBE founder Dan Stubbergaard and has been developed and taught in close collaboration with Bert De Jonghe, founder of Transpolar Studio. Transpolar Studio's Anne Ignatiussen also joined a range of desk crits and all review sessions.

Image credits: A small selection of visual representations of the final project by student team Lucas Holter (MUP) and Luna Kim (MAUD).

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

Book launch: July 24th, 2025, at Columbia University (New York City, USA)

Book review: by Matthew Jull in the peer-reviewed Polar Record journal (Cambridge University Press)

Awards: The book received the Gold Award in the Book Cover category at the European Design Awards 2026

Image credits: Book scans by Violetta Abbruzzino

Available for purchase

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.

Further reading: This studio is discussed in detail in the book Arctic Practices: Design for a Changing World (pages 372-383).

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.