Northern Findings

Arctic and Subarctic territories are undergoing unprecedented transformations. Climate changes, the melting ice, new trading routes, and resource exploitations contribute to a potent geopolitical situation that is radically reshaping the circumpolar area. Tense ecological, social, and political challenges are emerging in territories that have been traditionally marginal in landscape architecture discourses. The newly launched Tromsø Academy of Landscape and Territorial Studies has the ambition to call attention to the study of these territories and construct a framework able to address their transformations as they happen and from the perspective of landscape architecture. The first semester of teaching at the academy has started in August 2013. The semester expands on the theme Northern Findings. Northern Findings is both a broad investigation of the most potent forces acting on Arctic and Subarctic territories today and a research on landscape mapping as a tool for reading and interpreting the agency of these forces on the landscape and its ecosystems. The semester’s main ambition is to construct an interpretive cartography of parts of the Arctic and the Subartic that we like to define as a charged description of the territory. This blog is the main interface for dissemination of the course's research and projects to the large public.