Carlos Mínguez Carrasco

Kiruna Forever: Relocating a City in Territories of Extraction

Lecture by Carlos Mínguez Carrasco ‘12 MSCCCP, Chief Curator at ArkDes.

Kiruna – a city in the northernmost part of Sweden – is experiencing one of the biggest urban transformation projects in recent history. The city is being relocated by three kilometers due to the expansion of the mine around which Kiruna was built. A third of the population must relocate, housing blocks and landmark buildings are being demolished or moved, and a new city is taking shape. But how do you move a city?

The relocation of the city of Kiruna confronts us with the large questions that such a complex project raises. What is the limitation of natural resources? What happens to residents’ identity and security when their homes are demolished? How do we decide whether cultural heritage should be preserved or sacrificed? How does the relocation affect the lives of the Indigenous population, the Sámi? How permanent are the cities we live in?

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Carlos Mínguez Carrasco is and architect and curator based in Stockholm. He is Chief Curator at ArkDes – the Swedish National Centre for Architecture and Design. He has organized a wide range of exhibitions, events and competitions with a particular focus on how social, cultural, and political pressing issues influence contemporary architecture. Previously, he was Associate Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture, as well as being the Assistant Curator of OfficeUS, the U.S. Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Independently, he was the Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale with the After Belonging Agency. At ArkDes he leads the curatorial team, and has recently curated the exhibition Kiruna Forever (2020). He is editor of various publications, including After Belonging: Objects, Spaces and Territories of the Ways We Stay in Transit (Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), OfficeUS Manual (Lars Müller Publishers, 2017), Bodybuilding: Architecture and Performance (Performa, 2019), and Kiruna Forever (ArkDes and Arkitektur Förlag, 2020).

Photo credit: Klaus Thymann, Kiruna May 2019, 2019

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