Download or read book Mediating Environments written by Leena Cho and published by ORO Applied Research + Design. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By revisiting and reconfiguring the intersections between environmental and design systems, this publication aims to expand conceptual strategies in the arctic beyond the modes of insulation, stabilization, and optimization while repositioning the region as a central figure within the global network of exchanges. How can the 'arctic wall' as a defining feature of northern architecture be renegotiated? Can design, whether it is pavement assemblies or building foundations built on permafrost, escape the confines of technical precedence aimed to resist instability, and instead work with - take advantage of - dynamic environmental mechanisms, such as thermal cycles of ground, pronounced in the region? This study is not an argument against engineering but for greater synergies between engineering and design as well as between science and design, and for developing climatically responsive and arctic-specific paradigms for the construction and maintenance of arctic cities.