Inuit material culture: the case of municipal infrastructure in Nunavik and Greenland - David Allard-Martin

The technical nature of Northern cities is made visually evident because of permafrost and climate. As such, it is interesting to understand municipal infrastructure not only as a system or network, but also as objects and spaces that participate in the material / spatial culture of the North. Through a comparative analysis of multi-scale technical artifacts, this presentation demonstrates how municipal infrastructure articulates some of the links between built environment and territory, in the context of Arctic societies. In Nunavik, the tanker truck is a moving artefact used to supply each building of the village, as does the piping network of West Greenland. These two examples help understand the close relationship between municipal infrastructure and the spatiality of Northern cities.