Polar Architecture

 "For a long time architectural discourse happened in "the South" which is the rest of the planet as seen from the Artic - and only occasionally entered the polar regions. If architects did deal with the North, it was in the form of rather one-directional projects that stressed the harsh conditions for survival or the spirit of exploration and occupation of unknown territories, with little dialogue occuring between the contexts. Today an increasing political interest in the Artic is also reflected in various scales of geopolitics and climate control to the domestic space of ecological building. Although contemporary discourses surrounding the Artic often appear solely as environmental or climate research, the motifs behind building in the region are often bound up closely with territorial claims, geopolitical hegemony, or colonial interests.

Of all the environments on Earth perhaps the most dynamically extreme is that experienced in the Artic and Antartic. The polar landscape experiences the lowest temperatures, the driest air, and some of the highest winds on the planet. To this can be added shifting ground planes due to snow buildup and the migrating ice shelf, an unreliable supply chain due to transportation difficulties, and the extreme isolation for inhabitants of being cut off thousands of kilometers from the rest of humanity for whole seasons. And yet people need to live and work there and so building solutions have been found, ranging from the primitive prefabricated wooden buildings of the early exploration expeditions, to the latest sophisticated poratble solutions for national research stations. "

Utdrag fra "Artic Perspective Cahier No. 1 ARCHITECTURE" publisert av The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API)