People about Longyearbyen: Exploring sustainability at the nexus between the social and the built environment in a collaboration between architects and anthropologists

Keywords: Longyearbyen, Svalbard, sustainability, anthropology, architecture, built environment
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 60

Abstract

Longyearbyen, Svalbard, is transforming rapidly due to climate and structural economic change, impacting its social and cultural structure. In 2020, an unexpected collaboration between the local architectural studio LPO and the Svalbard Social Science Initiative developed in 2020. The aim was to examine how different groups in Longyearbyen perceive the town, how they use it and what needs and dreams they associate with the place. In the context of the extremely transient, international and fragmented society of Longyearbyen, it was our ambition to include perspectives of inhabitants regardless of their positioning within the society, and to disseminate the findings not only to the general public but also to planners and decision-makers as input for a participatory urban development. The methodology included focus groups and the creation of maps.

This paper gives an overview of the process and the findings, showing how the project was not only an exercise in collaborative research, but also an experiment in cooperation between architecture and anthropology. We will focus particularly on this latter aspect and show how architecture and anthropology can benefit from one another by drawing on concrete examples from the project. In relation to this, we explore our main finding, namely the entanglement of the built environment and social life in Longyearbyen, and ask how the planning, building and use of the built environment can contribute to social sustainability in an Arctic settlement.