Habitats of Extraction

Habitats of Extraction explores extraction practices as a matrix for spatial practices. That is, the way extraction of resources forms and frames architecture. The project rests on the predication that practices of extraction have severe climatic and biological consequences on a global scale. This urges us to reflect on how the way we build and the way we live – taken together: our habitat – are defined by extractive logics.

The project focus on the Arctic region with emphasis on a selection of contemporary empirical cases from Northern Norway and Northern Sweden. In order to understand the current position these areas have as extractive habitats, the project also considers the historical background of extraction in the wider Arctic area, including Greenland, Iceland, and Spitsbergen. The Arctic region is highly relevant as an object of study for several reason: climate change, changing patterns of human settlements, the prominent role played by new sources of green energy, and highly vulnerable environments.