Join us for an informal conversation between Bangkok-based landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom and Thai residents of Longyearbyen. We will talk about public space, getting around town, and what it is like to live in Svalbard. We will record, transcribe, and translate the conversation for a new book, Arctic Common.
What to expect: The conversation will be mostly in Thai, with some parts in English. It will last about 1.5 hours. Food and beverages will be provided.
On participation: Taking part is voluntary. You are welcome to come and listen without saying anything at all. The evening will be recorded so that the conversation can be transcribed and translated for the book. If you do speak, you can choose whether your name appears in the book or whether you remain unnamed, and you can change your mind about that later. You can ask us to leave something out at any point, during the evening or afterward, either by telling us on the night or by writing to the organisers afterward at info@transpolarstudio.com
More information on the book publication: Arctic Common is a three-volume series exploring design traditions shaping Svalbard, the Arctic archipelago governed by an international treaty that grants 46 nations equal rights. Each volume—On Asian-Arctic Communities and Agency, On Decommissioning and Rewilding, On Color and Detail—begins with a historical fragment that opens into contemporary design provocations. Developed through dialogue between the lead author and invited architects, landscape architects, and artists, the series interrogates how Svalbard's unique geopolitical status produces experimental design practices while questioning the Norwegian nationalism increasingly straining the archipelago's identity as an international commons.
In 2022, the Norwegian government withdrew voting rights in Longyearbyen from residents without three years' prior residence on the mainland. The decision fell almost entirely on the town's international population—people from more than fifty countries, including Thai and Filipino residents who stay longer on average than Norwegians. Housing policy has moved in the same direction, through rising state ownership and allocation aligned with geopolitical aims. A population that builds and maintains Longyearbyen has been removed from the formal means of shaping it.
The first volume, On Asian-Arctic Communities and Agency, attends to the Asian communities who live and work in Svalbard, and to their place in how the archipelago is imagined and built.
The aim is not to describe an under documented community but to publish its members alongside the architects and scholars who usually speak for such places. The transcribed version of the September 14 conversation will be published in this first volume.
How to join: Just come to the listed place at the listed time. No registration, nothing to pay.