ArkDes Fellowship 2020: Andrea Luciani

A study of architecture, place, and societal development in Svappavaara.

Andrea Luciani is a researcher at Luleå University of Technology and holds a PhD in architectural heritage preservation from Politecnico di Milano. His ArkDes Fellowship aimed to explore aspects of architect Ralph Erskine’s legacy in depth, within a broader context. Part of the research period was spent in Svappavaara, a mining town outside Kiruna, where Luciani studied and sought to reactivate Erskine’s building Ormen Långe. In collaboration with local residents, he analysed the built environment and initiated dialogue around how previously vacant spaces could be put to new uses.

Svappavaara is a small mining town north of the Arctic Circle in Kiruna Municipality, where Ralph Erskine in the 1960s was given the opportunity to realise part of his vision for an Arctic ideal city. Despite its ambitious goals, only a limited portion of the plan was realised due to a mining crisis and a declining population. One example of the challenges of applying large-scale ideas in a local context is Ormen Långe, a 200-metre-long residential building designed to shield the town from cold winds. Many of the intended communal functions to foster social cohesion were never completed, and insufficient infrastructure and public services made the area unpopular. Labour disputes followed, and residents moved to nearby towns like Kiruna and Malmberget, leaving buildings empty. Over time, maintenance issues led to half of Ormen Långe being demolished in 2009. Today, many of the residents are migrants and asylum seekers who arrived after the refugee crisis, making the building a reflection of contemporary societal issues such as globalisation, migration, and rural depopulation.

The ArkDes collection served as a valuable resource for understanding and illustrating the perspectives, visions, and narrative layers surrounding the development of Svappavaara from its planning stages onward. Through the archive, the historical social and political context shaping the site’s development was mapped out. In addition to initiating dialogue with the property owner Kirunabostäder, the project aimed to engage residents and people who had grown up in the area. The ambition was to help preserve Erskine’s legacy and reactivate shared public spaces that had fallen out of use.