ABSTRACT
This piece examines the relationship between architecture and colonization in Kiruna, Sweden, and its implications for the world. It analyses the impact of railway tracks on the Sami people, whose livelihoods depend on the land. Also it argues that maps have often reduced land owned by people of colour to its mineral and energy resources, resulting in ecological catastrophes caused by polluting companies. This approach has caused harm to indigenous communities worldwide, forcing them to abandon their ancestral lands and livelihoods. The essay emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the lasting effects of colonialism and creating continuity to reappropriate traditional and colonial elements. Finally, there is a call to action by breaking systems and rebuilding them in a more sustainable and equitable manner.
Key themes: Colonialism, Extraction and capital, Infrastructure, The agency of architects, The agency of indigenous rights, and social space.
INTRODUCTION
It might be useful to suggest that the notion that architecture is a political tool is directly proportional to the idea that racism is the sole basis of capitalism.
This awareness of the stagnant preconceptions of the city brings to light a new lens that will investigate and scratch at the surface of what it means to be human, civilization and urbanism; using the Swedish town of Kiruna - not just as an exhaustive site study but as a framework for critical theory. “Ametropolisisanaddictivemachine, fromwhichthereisnoescape,unlessitoffersthat,too.”-Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York
A metropolis amid radical upheaval is presented with bold claims: ‘onlyquestioniswhere’ The former statement suggests that due to infrastructure and planning the idea of the city sells to its habitants a dream and aids an agenda driven solely by capitalist ideologies and motives and brings the balance of existing, modern-day slavery to its tipping point. It is unable to grow and expand without swallowing its inhabitants whole; Suggesting that there is no other possible outcome than moving
The mining of the Kirunaavaara ore body, which is 80 meters wide, at least two kilometres deep, and slanting at a sixty-degree angle towards the city, has been continuous since 1960, and the earth beneath a small town in the north of Sweden; Kiruna has been progressively fracturing ever since. This close analysis of an urban entity will prove useful in the criticism of the ideologies birthed by Western rationale. 2. Where mining expansion persists despite indifference, fatality, and feelings of powerlessness all meet in one boiling point - The city – and its people's future is still up in the air.
FRACTURED CITY
In 2003, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) discovered untapped mineral reserves in Luossajärvi Lake. In 365 days, the company indicated that the exploitation of the new deposits would require the central areas of the city to be dismantled and relocated as the railway tracks were next to the lake.
The city's residents were given the option of either abandoning everything they know or continuing to live under constant threat. The relocation process has been painted in a favourable light by the media, creating an initial impression of the population as working-class single-industry mine employees who depend on this single activity for their livelihood. However, the relocation is fraught with pain, especially for the indigenous Sami people who have been under constant attack by mines that have consumed their land, sustenance, and way of life. Despite the impact on the Sami people, the relocation is presented as a necessary move in the name of progress and economic growth.
The impact of mining activities on the built environment and it’s rightful citizens who live there is a complex quandary. To understand how diverse residents affected by mining made sense of these radical changes, one must pay attention to the ways in which people dialogue about space
Doing things in space, representing space, making claims to space, and imagining space in the past, present, and future.
The relationship between mining, space, and society is multifaceted, and this urban transformation is not a purely professional endeavour but instead a case of 'commoning' involving various urban actors and stakeholdersworking together to share, manage, negotiate, and contest over resources and spaces. Invoking Lefebvre's (1991) idea that social space as a communal product allows us to highlight the interdependence of physical location, institutional authority, and interpersonal ties. Kiruna, a reservoir for dashed hopes and dreams, is recognised for its rich cultural offerings, including theatres, music clubs, movie clubs, sports clubs, and outdoor recreational activities like hunting, skiing, and fishing. The appropriation of Sami culture in Kiruna's architecture and design, such as the church and other buildings, contributes to the city's disingenuous identity and the marginalisation of the Sami people. Furthermore, this cultural misappropriation erases their history and traditions and reinforces the power dynamics that have long oppressed them.
The difference between this spatial production and that of the building as an agency is that- space is necessarily temporal, and the building as matter is often not. Accordingly, state power can be understood as the institutionalized temporary outcome of balancing and mediating between differing political, economic, and social forces. State institutions are time and place-specific social constructs capturing values, norms, and rules while encompassing social actors' perceptions and reflections on their own status, strategies, and actions.
As space in Kiruna becomes increasingly unpredictable and unstable, the project's political and contested nature is heightened. Silvia Federici's (2019 p. 85-97) observation that "commons receive more attention when they are threatened" is borne out in Kiruna as social, economic, and environmental conflicts become more apparent. For instance - Reindeer herders felt that they had limited political or legal leverage to influence development planning and expressed concern about continually adjusting their herding practices in the face of ongoing economic development. This suggests a feeling of exasperation and systematic repression of reindeer herding interests over time.
This ‘expansion” in Kiruna has brought about a significant change in the town's spatial and social dynamics. Suggesting a false dichotomy between either abandoning everything they know (and love) or continuing to live under constant threat of their dwelling going under from the expansion of the mine and growing cracks fast approaching the city while being forced into ever smaller spaces until they eventually perish. The battle shifts to one of ideology, encompassing the material oppression experienced by the marginalised and the aspirations of those alienated from the prevailing socio-technical systems.
THE PRIMACY OF INFRASTRUCTURE
Architecture and the agents charged with its design have not only been used for political propaganda but to reinforce existing power structures. Perhaps we might introduce a framework to understand the ongoing relationship between architecture and politics as complex and multifaceted and use it to understand how the built urban environment has shifted beyond the physical and the metaphysical and simply cannot be contained A flesh-eating urban model growing in the name of ‘forward civilisation’ but only benefiting the few worthy enough to be deemed ‘human’.
“Socialspaceisintractablypoliticalspace,insomuchaspeopleliveouttheirlivesinthisspace,andsoonehasto be continuously alert to the effects of that space on those lives.”
Nishat Awan, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture
Settlers painted a bleak picture of Kiruna, calling it a "wasteland," "wilderness," and "empty," presenting it as a frontier primed for resource extraction.
According to Henri Lefebvre, these scientific concepts have clear political, social, and ideological purposes, and they are essential to the reproduction of capitalism. For the indigenous Sami people, whose livelihoods depended on the land ('land is life' to the Sami), the installation of the railway tracks signified the 'end of land' and the city of Kiruna's permanent transformation into an industrial city dominated by the mining industry.
Their scientific knowledge of the area was of limited importance to the social interactions of the Sami and reindeer, but they employed maps and colour-coded sheets to demarcate and assign territory according to the national interest. An interest fuelled by greed paired with a lack of respect for land not their own or belonging to their forefathers resulted in an apparent performance effort that failed to acknowledge the Sami's intricate relationship with the land, Mapping was regarded as having converted reindeer to industry, therefore we might go as far as to call it not just a dance between exploitation and urbanism as we know it; but the waltz of death.
From colonial narratives to today's market-driven techniques that divide communities according to consumer preferences and social mores, it's clear that to be human - would mean to engage in performative acts of placemaking.
Ideology is encoded in maps, which often reduce the worth of land owned by people of colour to its mineral and energy resources, resulting in ecological catastrophe at the hands of polluting companies. To what extent maps are seen as genuine scientific tools is a measure of their successful performative nature. Both in Western and non-Western contexts, maps have played key roles throughout history, and established communal identities –whether they be true or false
Mapping originally sought out to be a procedure in a historical context, has now been reduced to a vile act of socially created performance and oppression.
However, the construction of maps is not without contention
Nomadic by nature, and reliant on the weather for their grazing practises, the Sami found it impractical and inconvenient to live in one place as their territory was gradually eroded by settlement and mining growth. This conundrum complicated the already delicate interaction between the settlers and the Sami by blurring the distinctions between their respective spaces. Respect is a façade, no ?
“KIRUNA 4EVER”
“Nothingdisappearscompletely...Inspace,whatcameearliercontinuestounderpinwhatfollows... Pre-existing space underpins not only durable spatial arrangements but also representational spaces and their attendant imagery and mythic narratives.”
Henri Lefebvre, TheProduction of Space
The Swedish government, local government, and the municipal council chose a new urban centre location in 2011 for the relocation of the fragmented city after consultation with the residents. In 2012, the council selected ten international architecture companies to create a 20-year master plan for the new city centre They proposed a linear city, using the analogy of a gondola, to handle the continuous change and create a sustainable New Kiruna as the destination and core around which the other parts of the city could be rebuilt if necessary.
The linear city, conjured by predominantly white architects; was not just a design for a single site but showed a process that would unfold in physical space and over time, move towards something new such as nature, recreation, and tourism. With public transport on one main street and linking the mine from one end to the other, the linear city was proposed to be an airport after mining ceases, and a tourist centre
One might suggest, that There are numerous and profound local conflicts in Kiruna involving different economic interests and reindeer herders. At the Abisko Conference 2013, consultation and cooperation as required by the law (relocation of Kiruna reference) were terms often used when describing interaction among stakeholders over
environmental issues. However, reindeer herders experienced consultation as a shallow techno-bureaucratic exercise that sectoral authorities could easily control.
Sami institutions for collective action, such as the Sami Parliament, are not addressing attempts to mitigate the effects of ongoing disturbances. Building trust may require new kinds of institutions that better coordinate development activities and distribute power-sharing among actors more evenly.
METAPHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
“Deep conflicts can be a defining feature of a dysfunctional system, and negotiation can frequently aid in their resolution “ - Gallard et al.
The term "encroachment" refers to tense relations between people as well as between humans and nature. Through spatial creations, the Swedish Parliament and national interest policies define idealised human-nature linkages. In this environment, Sámi activities are regulated to ensure that they do not interfere with settler interests and to avoid future confrontations. However, this control restricts Sámi movement, labour, and selfdetermination disproportionately, resulting in unequal relationships between Sámi and non-indigenous actors.
Reindeer herding, like mining law, planning, permitting, and tourism (Raitio, Allard, & Lawrence, 2020), is considered a matter of national interest. Conflicts between the Swedish state and Sámi reindeer herders persist, and the state has stripped Sámi communities of their decision-making power over small-game hunting and fishing.
The product of the primacy of infrastructure paired with a deep fetishization of capitalism as an unconscious doctrine whose persistence can no longer be limited to the island of its origination is one to explore. The link and also might we say, indifference between the physical and metaphysical is glaring in the site study of Kiruna. In certain cases, mining has unintentionally led to the development of tourism infrastructure.
Roads designed to carry iron ore, for example, paved the way for downhill skiing in Kiruna. Tourism initiatives that promote cultural conceptions of the Sámi as caretakers of nature may exploit the Sámi's 'otherness' by converting their dynamic culture into a source of wealth for others (Pettersson 2006). The LKAB problems of the 1970s and 1980s shifted the local emphasis to tourism and diversification. Foreign tourists visit LKAB's underground visitor centre, but these favourable tourism outcomes are not the result of LKAB's conscious efforts; rather, they are products of the company's expansion.
The symbolic and social effects that the apportioning of land once belonging to indigenous people were substantially more prevailing than its physical appearance; As a result of not only segregating and oppressing them but trapping them in what is most certainly now a polluted wasteland, is awfully ironic and just might be the textbook definition of architecture in a political context, not just representing the system but becoming the very system of incarceration itself.
A proactive response to the intimate connection between Indigenous people and the land to create an emphasis on the need for healing the social schism in not only the urban built environment but the political landscape in conjunction and initiate such a movement in a collective and community-based fashion perhaps might be the viable solution.
At the core, it might be important to note that to critically assess the heavy hand part colonisation has made with the enablement of design and those charged with it is to pave a necessary way for a sustainable future and without it, the alternative will simply be not an eradication of a particular race as some would prefer, but extinction as we know it.
DELIRIOUS CONGO“Theinhabitantsofthisarchitecture,thosestrongenoughtoloveit,wouldbecomeitsvoluntaryprisoners,ecstatic inthefreedomoftheirarchitecturalconfines”–
Rem Koolhaas, Delirious S M L XLDuring the colonial era, urban planning created a false sense of ethnic identification and divided communities, a practice that persists today with elections often based on these artificially constructed ethnic identities and a need for hope
Many countries celebrated “independence”from imperialist kingdoms. However, that sense of pride in separating themselves from their ‘mother’ country was misplaced… what should have remained in its place should be a deep mourning and repentance for giving up their ‘wasteland’ and welcoming the shepherds in disguise – guiding their sheep to the socio-economic slaughterhouse. So. After years of being subject to urban slavery, there is a decision to take back the land; but at what cost?
To be able to move forward, we must shed light on the lasting effects of the colonial apparatus, that is architecture and to reveal the elements from which society still struggles to break free. Employing a framework that focuses on several key aspects is deemed useful.
To explore this we will use Congo - The historical context of colonial segregation and exploitation in Lubumbashi and its ongoing impact on the city's ecology, urbanism, and population is a result of the urban planning during the colonial era in creating a false sense of ethnic identification, which persists today in the form of ethnic-based elections.
To heal would be a result of creating an emphasis on continuity and the need to combine tradition and modernity to reappropriate both traditional and colonial elements and consider time at a geological scale, acknowledging the millennia of history that preceded colonialism and the ongoing impact of colonial influences on African societies today.
Fig 1 Spatialising Conflict – Decoding the instrumentalization of space in the Ram Janmabhumi Movement, India Fig 2 On the Margins of Utopia – the painting as an apparatus for the projection of ideologies for a future interwoven with the present, towards a construction of time.
CONCLUSION
Delirious New York is a polemical investigation of Manhattan, the ultimate metropolis. To understand the role that the built city plays is to test out the ultimate model and juxtapose it with others. After a rigorous study of the stagnant relationship between racial capitalism and the metropolis as an archetype, we might be able to better understand our contender as not just one entity but an ideology that has persisted since the beginning of time –oppression and greed. Architecture, as well as enabling it, can also be used as a tool to cause a reversal and become a means to its end in the same breath. Racism is a structure used to put the idea of the ‘individual’ or ‘human’ into a category. The way you would map out an urban area and build out the infrastructure around it,
they are both cages, whether metaphysical or physical, but the methodology is the same. To heal would mean to trace the method and fragment it critically until there might be none left. Perhaps teaching us an important lesson, that scale goes far beyond the naked eye. Scale can break systems and put them back together. The city is an artefact – a collage of decorative delirium and an overdose of self-hatred, saviourism, and built symbols of capitalism.
REFERENCES
Lefebvre, H. and Nicholson-Smith, D. (2017). The production of space. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell.
López, E. M. 2021. Transforming Kiruna. Producing Space, Society, and Legacies of Inequality in the Swedish Ore Fields. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 62. 280 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91513-1335-1.
Federici, S 2018, Re-enchanting the World : Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, PM Press, Oakland. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [22 February 2023].
Jain, M. and Rohracher, H. (2022) “Assessing transformative change of infrastructures in urban area redevelopments,” Cities (London, England), 124(103573), p. 103573. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2022.103573.
Tepecik Diş, A. and Karimnia, E. (2021) “Reframing Kiruna’s relocation spatial production or a sustainable transformation?,” Sustainability, 13(7), p. 3811. doi: 10.3390/su13073811.
THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE. (2021). The Red Deal: An Indigenous Manual to Decolonize and Heal the Earth [online] Available at: https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/decolonial-ecologies/the-red-deal-an-indigenousmanual-to-decolonize-and-heal-the-earth [Accessed 23 Apr. 2023].
White Arkitekter. (n.d.). Kiruna masterplan. [online] Available at: https://whitearkitekter.com/project/kirunamasterplan/.
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