Understanding Space

Reflections from a trans-arctic journey

When reflecting over the experiences gained from a diverse and fascinating journey through an area that is both an extreme periphery and the center of the world at the same time I find my self looking for a common denominator for the whole region. What it it that they all have in common expect for the geographical location to the North. This might be the proximity to resources, but this is not true for all the places we've visited. What we did see in all the places we visited were resourceful people who were able to make innovative change with limited resources. Talented local politicians in Alta, birdwatching architects in Vardø, Pikene på Broen in Kirkenes and Mr. Pink, the first youth club in the ground floor of a anonymous housing block in Murmansk. If I was going to point or one thing they all have in common is a competence of innovation and improvisation. This is the same ability Joar describe in the spatial practices that can be observed in the intricate system conceived in the gardens of the Sami population. These innovations can also be described as different uses and conceptions of space in the definition of space by Doreen Massey.

The contested understanding of space as the surface where
places, peoples, cultures and phenomena simply exist.

"...first, that we recognize space as the product of interrelations; as constituted through interactions, from the immensity of the global to the intimately tiny.

Second; that we understand space as the sphere of possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist, as the sphere of coexisting heterogeneity. Without space, no multiplicity; without multiplicity; no space.

Third, that we recognize space as always under construction. Precisely because space on this reading is a product on relations-between, relations that are necessarily embedded material practices which have to be carried out, it always in the process of being made. It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we can imagine space as simultaneity of stories-so-far."

Doreen Massey, on the assumptions of Space

Understanding the interactions, conflicts and historical trajectories in Vardø

Gaining a new understanding of space in use seen from the point of view of the Sami population.



Internal Urbanism in Murmansk as a result of privatization of apartments.
The Mr. Pink project is a realization of the potential represented by the the wast amount of abandoned ground floor apartments.