Arctic Design for the Real World: Basic Concepts and Educational Practice

In this article, we outline the potential of design to inform the vision of human existence in severe environmental settings. For that, we propose the Arctic Design (AD) framework as providing new sensitivity to global issues and preparing for the liveable future in the everchanging environment. Through a brief historical overview of the AD origin, we summarize the past and present developments in the field into several concepts, and here present three of them: hybrid culture, context-sensitivity, and continuous adaptation. We illustrate each concept with examples from design educational practice in two relevant universities in Russia and Finland. Through reconsideration of the relationship between humans and technology in the presence of an influential environment, the proposed framework offers researchers and practitioners new ways of understanding and approaching extreme settings, which serve a testing ground for innovative solutions to adaptation problems critical for human survival and sustainable wellbeing.