Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory (Actar Publishers)Â
Photo by Patrice Halley - Looking for mussels under the ice after the tide has gone out, Kangiqsujuaq, Quebec.
The Conflicting Future for Arctic Settlement and Design
Blaine Brownell reviews âMany Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territoryâ by architects Lola Sheppard and Mason White.
By comparison, the early, âpermanentâ housing typologies imported by the Canadian governmentâsuch as the poorly insulated plywood âmatchbox houseâ and awkward prefabricated rigid frame houseâdemonstrated a wasteful, ineffectual use of resources and a lack of sensitivity to site. The widespread deployment of these structures, in conjunction with governmental policies requiring year-round settlement, represents the use of architecture as a forceful tool of âinternal colonialism.â âIn the end, this meant a tremendous disruption to the Inuit way of life,â said historian P. Whitney Lackenbauer in an interview with the authors. âThe population abruptly shifted from one that had followed a seasonal pattern for centuries to one where, within the span of a single decade, almost all families had moved into permanent settlements.â
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By interrogating the incongruity of enforced spatial practices in the Canadian Arctic, Many Norths projects unsettling questions onto the domineering enterprises of the industrialized world. Although Sheppard and White refrain from making their own design proposals in the book, they present a clear case for alternative strategies. âThe conditions of the North demand that architects and planners be more inclusive about developmentâs relationship to the environment and cultural practices,â they write. âGiven the economic hardships and highly dispersed communities, the region demands that all spatial practitioners, especially architects, engineers, and planners, consider design within the wider physical, cultural, and logistical context of the Canadian Arctic.â
The Conflicting Future for Arctic Settlement and Design |Â Canadian ArchitectÂ
The plural nature of this remote territory is the bookâs primary emphasisâthat no one model or description fits despite superficial resemblances, whether they be economic, ecological, climatic, or even military, across massive geographic areas.
âFor better or for worse,â they write in the bookâs opening chapter, âif nothing else [the Norths are] a shifting, multivalent territory: culturally dynamic, environmentally changing, and socially evolving. Digital and physical mobility networks expand, ground conditions change, treelines shift, species hybridize, and cultures remain dynamic and cross-pollinating.â
Exploring these differences, they add, was âthe motivation for this book.â
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There are Mars simulations, remote scientific facilities, schools, military bases, temporary snowmobile routes (snowmobile psychogeography!), and communal utilities corridors.
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Among more than a dozen other subjects, there are discussions with anthropologist Claudio Aporto on âwayfinding techniques and spatial perceptionâ among the Inuit, with âmaster marinerâ Thomas Paterson on the logistics of Arctic shipping, with historian Shelagh Grant on âsovereigntyâ and âsecurityâ in the far north, and with Baffin Island native whale hunter Charlie Qumuatuq on seasonal food webs.
2087
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