DocTalks is a series dedicated to ongoing investigations by doctoral, postdoctoral, or early-career researchers into the expansive entanglement of architecture and the natural environment. These sessions are meant to create an intercollegiate cohort of scholars who workshop writing, share research findings, and experiment with methodological tools while engaging with the vision and investigations of the Ambasz Institute.
These Doc Talk sessions are intended for scholars or architecture history and theory, but scholars in related fields and the general public are welcome to attend.
On the Border: A Story of River Commons
Speaker
Stefano Tornieri, Luleå University of Technology
The impact of contemporary megasystems and heavy resource extractions on extreme and marginalized territories can indeed have significant social, economic, and environmental consequences, often disproportionately affecting small communities. Are we losing those stories? Are we losing an essential way of life?
Throughout history, small village communities in the Arctic have developed several strategies to ensure their survival. Along the Torne River, on the border between Sweden and Finland, some fishing communities have produced specific architectures, landscapes, and social strategies to support their communities and survive for centuries. In the villages of Kukkola and Korpikylä, communities developed a distinct fishing system, which became known as dipnetting. Characterized by a single person fishing from the shore or off of specially constructed piers, dipnetting is a traditional, resource-sparse technique. Environmentally friendly techniques have developed on the spot and remained unchanged for long, as described since the 20th century by the Finnish ethnologist T. Sirelius (1906) who documented the fishing activity and the construction of several wooden piers at specific points of the riverbanks called Krenkku. This temporary structure is human-buildable and demountable, made from local wood and constructed every fishing season by the old builders. During the fishing season, the locals organize activities related to fishing such as building wooden piers, maintaining and repairing traditional village buildings, organizing fishing rounds and organizing the sharing events each evening during the whitefish season. During the whitefish season, from June to mid-September, the shift between fishermen during the day is organized by an informal meeting that occurs every day at 6:00 p.m. near the river. During this event, considered a daily ceremony, the catch from the past 24 hours is shared between farmers. The community is still present today, but depopulation, aging, climate change, and the expansion of the extraction industry are threatening these villages.
Stefano Tornieri earned an MA in architecture in 2010 and a PhD in architectural composition in 2015 at University Iuav of Venice. He has been a visiting fellow at CEAU (Study Center Architecture and Urbanism) at FAUP University of Porto in 2014. From 2016 to 2023 he was a research fellow at IR.IDE (Infrastructure Research Integral Design Environment) at University Iuav of Venice. He is currently a lecturer at LTU Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. Tornieri was winner of the Lerici Foundation Grant in 2020 and the Canon Foundation Research Fellowship 2023. He was nominated for the EU Mies Van Der Rohe Award 2019, and was the curator of Grenada Pavilion at the 17th Venice Biennale and co-curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 18th Venice Biennale.
Respondent
Elise Hunchuck, Columbia University
Yam Economies and Settler Improvements Across Whadjuk Noongar County
Speaker
Sean Thomas Tyler, Estonian Academy of Arts
Today, stretching over 160 kilometres of Whadjuk Noongar Country in southwestern Australia, is the self-proclaimed longest city in the world, Perth. Single-family homes and British pastoral parks are jutted up and down an ever-expanding peripheral urbanization, where highly biodiverse and endemic “wild nature” is “improved” on through subdivision, clearing, fencing, and the construction of profit-oriented low-density housing. This article draws on a specific history of colonization and suburbanization premised on land improvement, which has fundamentally reshaped relationships between society and land, first in Britain and then as these ideas travelled to Whadjuk Noongar Country. By tracing a history of First Nation warran (yam) economies buried within colonial and capitalist structures, the article aims to provide a lens through which to contest the inadequacies of prevailing orders and values towards land, to serve as a starting point in delivering truly inclusive and collective futures.
Sean Thomas Tyler is a guest lecturer and PhD researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts exploring the discourse of stewardship in contemporary landscape architecture. Tyler also practices as an urbanist/landscape practitioner within Public Office, where they engage in the built environment at the intersection of architecture, political economy, and ecology.
Respondent
Isabel Rodríguez de la Rosa, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
This event was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.