Productive landscapes and the cultural historical environment : Prototyping a small-scale productive system utilizing the immediate landscape

Abstract: The thesis is an investigation of global exploitation of nature, use of productive landscapes and itsremaining structures as the cultural historical environment. The further aim has been to seek analternative approach against a large-scale utilization of the environment through an elaborativeprocess of an architectural intervention, combining public space and local production. The thesisbackground is exploring the human activities and outcomes in exploited landscapes and is departingfrom the issue of an anthropocentric approach toward the environment. Further on, it analyzesdifferent mindset on natural resources in relation to the building of civilization and society, the ruralcontra the urban. Against the background of a linear withdrawal of resources and in the long-termlandscape productive decline, the aim is to prototype a productive infrastructure that works in acyclical manner, re-using energy and being less dependent on resources at a large-scale. Departingfrom the regional environment in Umeå and its traditional agricultural and former industrial use ofthe landscape, the intervention is tested by considering the principles of sustained life by theimmediate landscape. The aim has been to analyze and translate principles at the scale of landscape,farm and unit into a reproducible, productive infrastructure that harvest energy from recreation,cultivation, production and the condition of the topography.