The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design is in the process of developing a research project on Landscapes of Energy. This project will involve aninterdisciplinary range ofinternational and national partners. In order to examine present and future energy infrastructure in Norwegianand other circumpolar areas through landscape research, this project takes the form of field trips/ research journeys. The field trip has been used by architects, anthropologists an d artists for centuries, to explore territories, cultures and resources. The geopolitical situation presently evolving in the circumpolar areas compels us to revive the field trip as a way to explore landscapes and the multifarious perspectives from which to conceive of them.
Our trips seek to activate opposite, but interdependent perspectives, i.e. that of experiencing the world from withinand that of tracing what is already known, a view from without. Landscape, asanintegral part of lived space, de velops and exists in a continuum ofindividual and collective practices, movements, economies and experiences. While researchers to a heightened degree base their research on satellite imagery, artists and contemporary documentary practices (landscape arc hitecture, architectural mapping) are concentrating on geologic and social landscapes.
Traveling through landscapes where the human made and the natural converge, we will combine landscape-based anthropology, media studies, geology, literary studies, la ndscape architecture, urbanism, and artistic practicesin order to uncover, not only the terrain, but also the importance of landscape asan agent in social development and management. By exploring landscapes of energy through a complex practice that gene rates, maps and cross-interrogates perspectives in-the-making, we will be able to raise awareness of landscapes also as energy. The trips will be a means to develop and conceptualize an extensive research project.