ArkDes
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2025
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Report: Visions in the North step 2 – Kiruna

Photo: Team Berätta mig vidare. 2024. View from Gruvberget, overlooking Svappavaara.

How can we create sustainable housing in a short time while utilising existing resources and creating good quality living environments in the long term? This is the main question in the innovation project Visions in the North step 2.

In Norrbotten and Västerbotten, some of the largest investments ever in green transition, technology and infrastructure are currently underway. The investment places great demands on more housing, attractive living environments and long-term sustainability.

Through a call for proposals in the spring of 2024, the Council for Sustainable Cities selected Team Berätta mig vidare to explore how we can strengthen living and living environments in rural areas at an early stage, through the processes and power of design, based on Svappavaara, Kiruna.

Team Berätta mig vidare‘s starting point has been to meet Svappavaara through presence, dialogue and stories. By exploring storytelling as a relational method, the team has developed a proposal for a design process for spaces for learning in Skolskogen, close to Svappavaara school. The design process is based on the power of storytelling, involves collaboration with the school’s teachers and students and will result in spatialities for nature education, activities and imagination in the School Forest. Team Berätta mig vidare‘s inventory, analysis and proposals are summarised in a report consisting of a management and development plan.

Visions in the North step 2

Visions in the North step 2 is initiated by the Council for Sustainable Cities ↗, the government’s initiative for sustainable urban development. ArkDes, Boverket ↗, Energimyndigheten ↗, Vinnova ↗ and Formas ↗ are behind the initiative, together with the municipalities of Kiruna ↗, Gällivare ↗, Boden ↗, Luleå ↗, Skellefteå ↗ and Umeå ↗.