Fjäll, o le altre Alpi: Costruire nelle montagne del Nord

Contemporary Nordic architecture is shaped by its relationships with the global architectural practice and its material and cultural ties to the regional context. This essay investigates the specificities of mountain and rural architecture in the Nordic countries in the last two decades, with case studies from Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Because of their proximity to the Arctic Circle, the living conditions in these territories are very close to those in the Alpine regions, despite the lower elevation. The essay discusses several factors which are currently at play when it comes to the architectural practice in the North: the relationship between landscape and tourism, the reuse of twentieth-century rural heritage, the resilience of traditional building techniques, and the clashes between local territories, policies of extractivism, and colonial power.