Permafrost Politics: Toward a Relational Materiality and Design of Arctic Ground

ABSTRACT

Permafrost—continuously frozen ground for more than two years—is one of the defining landscape elements in the Arctic. In the U.S., its development as an idea has parallelled mid-twentieth-century territorial struggles in Alaska and is inextricably linked to permafrost science and frontier engineering. Permafrost is more than a scientific category and engineering risk subject to correction and control; it is a foundation for dynamic socioecological and cultural expressions in arctic landscapes. In response, a relational approach is taken to examine permafrost’s cold, vibrant and plural materialities, with an aim of generating design possibilities that are attuned to these dynamics. In the Arctic where science continues to play a central role in determining putative futures, the article further suggests to creatively instrumentalise scientific forms of landscape inquiry, highlighting thermo-material interactions and multiplicities of arctic ground.

KEYWORDS:

• Permafrost
• arctic landscape
• science
• landscape architecture
• frozen ground
• Alaska
• engineering

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the members of the UVA Arctic Design Group and Arctic CoLab who continue to offer valuable insights and collaborative platform for interdisciplinary research and practice in the Arctic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the author.

Notes

1. In a letter sent to the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic program on 19 March 2020, four tribal organisations from Alaska—Kawerak, Inc, Association of Village Council Presidents, Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, and Bering Sea Elders Group—describe permafrost as a community infrastructure vital to their livelihoods.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [#1744413], the University of Virginia (UVA) Environmental Resilience Institute, and the UVA Centre for Global Inquiry and Innovation.

Notes on contributors

Leena Cho

Leena Cho is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture, and Director of Arctic Design Group at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Her research examines uniquely dynamic materialities of arctic landscapes, their significance and potentials as design mediums, as well as scientific practices that organise and produce landscapes in the Arctic. This work has taken her to northern Alaska, Svalbard, and Arctic Russia, and to the cross-readings of science, engineering and humanities to examine the role of landscape design in the amplified and transforming built environments in the arctic. She is author and editor of Mediating Environments (2019), and principal of design office, Kutonotuk.