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ALTERED GEOGRAPHIES: The Wounds of Post-Industrial Sites

How do we convey the depletion of ecosystemic bodies caused by industrial forces? Can we envision these scarred and violated lands as new territorial forms of natural and cultural value through landscape remediation and social/ecological restorative practices? Studio 12 develops Territorial Research and Geopolitical Agency, seeking new forms of cohabitation in injured landscapes around Arctic post-industrial sites. The aim is to analyze the post-condition of territories altered by man-made forces and to envision natural and cultural reservoirs thriving on them by revisiting ecosystemic values, boundaries, and the violations of nature's rights. The students' projects find agency by developing critical and imaginative investigation in two directions: by exposing the Arctic environmental changes, loss and damage of ecological bodies, and by hypothesizing environmental scenarios over the scars, envisioning complex ecological futures. The research-based projects formulate bioremediation strategies able to regulates and rebalance the metabolism of the disrupted landscapes through restorative practices. The experimental and speculative projects look into brownfield sites, graveyards and wastelands, polluted or deforested landscapes, addressing the constraints based on what Bruno Latour describes as the "Critical Zones". The students speculates around carbon-free geographies, multispecies landscapes, free energy systems managed by community grids, or landscape eco-infrastructures that remediates.

Context
The studio conducts intersectional collaborative cartographies and living maps that showcase a wide range of scenarios of territorial injustice and infrastructural violence in Arctic regions. The research begins by producing living maps, denouncing agents of disturbance and the exhaustion of exceptional ecological resources and vulnerable lands.

Responding to climate change, the students take a closer look at alterations as territorial phenomena, revisiting special states of protection and preservation, conservation laws, environmental regulations, and the territorial status of these damaged landscapes, as well as the geopolitical implications in terms of regional planning.

This year, the studio will continue exploring how to revitalize affected landscapes with nature-based systems, applying territorial design methodologies to reimagine the healing of wounds toward future scenarios of restoration and regeneration. The studio aims to create new ecological narratives that intertwine the physical, social, and environmental dimensions embedded in the territory, in the land, and in the soil.

Studio Agenda
We scrutinize the Arctic region to understand what is happening within altered territories at scales ranging from the planetary to the molecular. Our agenda spans unpacking complex territorial dynamics and forms such as military areas, hydropower stations, power lines, intact forests or forest fires, focusing on endangered species, pollution, toxicities, CO2 levels, river transformations, and infrastructural violence like solar panel and windmill fields.

Starting with biological samples and material testimonies from the sites, we move to satellite imagery and geo-information to observe patterns of destruction, engaging with the agents. We will travel across microscopic, local, territorial, regional, and planetary dimensions of the problems to examine and test transcalar design operations, delving into worlds of survival and rejuvenation. By exploring endemic processes and ecological systems as forms of landscape intelligence, the projects will develop strategies for territorial restoration and post-recovery. Emphasizing the intersection of geo-territorial systems and infrastructural alterations, we aim to redefine boundaries of protection and environmental regulation. By understanding the layers impacting sensitive ecosystems, we seek synthetic and natural recovery patterns, and long-term ecological health and resilience.

Experiencing that journey of critical investigation, the studio will conduct experimental territorial design methods to envision alternative ecosystems, rethinking environmental jurisdictional scaffolding, forms of coexistence, and self-emancipation over the wounds of resource extraction. Through transitional protocols, material reengineering, biocomponents, emerging living systems, and the time of natural bio-processes, students will formulate the main design parameters.

Studio Methodology
Through a multiscale and multimedia representation, the studio aims to showcase a diverse array of degraded landscapes depicting territorial injustice and infrastructural violence within Nordic/Arctic geographies. By mapping complex geo-spatial data, the projects create an experiential and immersive 3D research environment for the study of disruptive phenomena.

Using scientific and artistic tools to conduct territorial research and design methodologies, the students unfold various forms of environmental exhaustion at a variety of sites and scales, including trans-scalar material investigations, territorial maps of living species, critical and intersectional cartographies, complex modeling, 3D scanning/printing, and AI iterations. The multi-dimensional perspective of the research projects incorporates long-term remediation strategies applied to diverse forms of scars produced by extractive practices. The project methodology understands time as an available resource to reprogram exploited and damaged lands. The strategic proposals, comprehensive regional plans, and landscape reengineering must account for long-term implementation, considering seasonal growth, material decay, and climatic conditions.

By revitalizing the landscapes with micro-operations and restorative cycles the research-based actions will develop forms of agency and new models of cooperation for holistic territorial management.

We envision that the network of green and blue corridors, reservoirs, biotopes, sanctuaries, and bioregions produced in Studio 12 will generate an atlas of environmental advocacy around these critical zones that Latour calls for.

Teaching team: Studio Responsible: Alejandro Haiek Coll. Tutors: Emelie Aktanius. Ebba Landstedt, Tuvalie Juntti (External tutors)

Latest update: 2024-09-05