Varanger Immemorial
Master thesis
Submitted version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3134824Utgivelsesdato
2024-06Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
Beskrivelse
Context. In the Arctic, climate change will lead to both new challenges and new opportunities, and communities must learn to balance preservation and dynamic development in novel ways. Here we must asks; how do we engage with irreversible and unpredictable change? What makes landscapes valuable or resourceful in the first place? Is there a path between the conventional schemes of static preservation and extractive development?
Project. This diploma is a critical reflection on the static, spatially oriented, and primarily regulatory program of contemporary “natural reserves”, as well as the technological infrastructure and cartographic practices that enable such nature-society relations. Is there an alternative?
Concept. Instead of administrative boundaries that simply separate the human from the non-human, it deploys site-specific design to engage constructively with material trajectories and foster multi-species collaboration. It focuses specifically on the deep-time process of soil formation, and how it connects both Sami reindeer herders, local farmers, conservation biologists and state officials on the Varanger peninsula.
Design. The interventions utilize low retention walls constructed from locally sourced slate rock to form a sequence of distinct ”gardens”. Attention is given to how microtopography interacts with water and facilitate a host of native grass species. Over time, the gardens will evolve through the collaboration between multiple actors and form a spatial and temporal knot; a point of convergence where material trajectories and local agency come together within reciprocal relationships.