About the project

At present the Circumpolar North provides a unique laboratory for studying future landscapes of production, infrastructure, excavation, and environmental change.

Northern territories are under pressure due to planned exploration and extraction of oil, gas and minerals, bringing about rapid development of cities, settlements and landscapes. The project maps these ‘future’ landscapes (including urban landscapes) from an interdisciplinary perspective and studies the relationship between people and their environments as well as the importance of social and individual agency in the development of the landscapes.

The FUTURE NORTH project is founded in a conception of landscape as a shared material human experience, one that supplements the traditional conception of landscape as primarily an aesthetic category. The project both looks at landscape as the result of political, cultural and social development – but also explores landscape and as an agency in the production of these.

The project will raises awareness and knowledge of new landscape typologies, include the everyday in the category of landscape, and explore tools to articulate and narrate such perspectives.

The project is a collaboration between the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape and the Institute of Design, with the Barents Institute as an external partner. It is financed by the Research Council of Norway’s SAMKUL program.