Modern North: Architecture on the Frozen Edge

The geographic region around the North Pole is a raw and exotic area of untouched nature and inescapable beauty. Unique among the Earth's ecosystems, it includes both a vast, ice-covered ocean and a treeless region of tundra. Building in this extremely cold climate requires an advanced degree of ingenuity and resolve. Ecological conditions including high winds, snowdrifts, and permafrost, combined with periods of little or no sunlight, present seemingly impossible logistical hurdles. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of resident and invited architects creating buildings above 60 degrees latitude. The time has come for a new definition of a northern building—one that isboth extraordinarily responsive to place and aesthetically provocative.