Postcolonial Arctic Urbanization: A Polyvocal Assembly of Perspectives
By (Author) Elise Misao Hunchuck
By (author) Michael Bravo
Actar Publishers
Actar Publishers
9th September 2025
United States
General
Non Fiction
Individual architects and architectural firms
History of architecture
Paperback
224
Width 150mm, Height 215mm
This books collection of critical engagements by designers and Arctic scholars aims to bring clarity to the timely question: What is postcolonial Arctic urbanization.
This book project frames plural understandings of postcolonial Arctic urbanization. In the past, Arctic urbanization has been dominated by colonial and nation-state interests, was influenced by design perspectives appropriate to more southern landscapes, and suffered from a limited understanding of the regions internal dynamics, unique climatic conditions, and diversity of people and cultures. Today, designers must take on the responsibility to avoid committing the same mistakes as seen in the past. Through a postcolonial lens and geared to an international design audience, this publication is a response to such varied histories impacting the discipline and practices of Arctic urbanization. Taken together, this work brings together a range of formats, styles of contributions, and different media into a varied, polyvocal assemblyweaving and overlapping different notions of the many built environments across the many Arctics.
Elise Misao Hunchuck (she/her) is a transdisciplinary landscape architect, editor, researcher, writer, and curator. Her practice brings together architecture, landscape architecture, and media studies to research sites in Canada, Japan, China, and Ukraine, employing text, images, and cartographies to document, explore, and archive the co-constitutive relationships between plants, animals, and minerals--in all of their forms. She is the journal editor and one of the curatorial directors for transmediale, the yearly digital and media art festival in Berlin.