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This book emerges as a disciplinary extension of the exhibition project Transforming Legacy: The Evolution of Extractive Culturesin the European Arctic, presented at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2025. The exhibited work explores the complex layering of extractive cultures in the European Arctic and sub-Arctic environments, questioning whether the rhetoric of the “smart city” can genuinely deliver sustainability in the periphery of extractive economies –where deeply rooted development patterns continue to dominate. At the core of the project lies the tension between technologically advanced iron ore production in mining towns and the ancestral “intelligences” of Indigenous communities living in these regions (Sweden, Norway, Finland, and eastern Russia).The current model of Arctic urban development, driven by extractivism and masked by smart city ambitions, is reshaping territorial and social structures. In contrast, Indigenous knowledge, such as Sámi reindeer herding or traditional Arctic river fishing practices, offer alternative, rural, and dispersed approaches to sustainability that challenge centralized, industrial models and may hold new appeal for contemporary inhabitation. This evolution in extractive culture reveals how advanced digital systems are altering human interaction with land, generating both conflict and unexpected intersections. These transformations can be understood through the lens of assemblage, a dynamic juxtaposition of elements and systems that are often distant or seemingly incompatible: automation and ancestral knowledge, industrial infrastructures and fragile ecosystems, remote sensing and embodied traditions.
