The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World
The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Abstract
What is the source of Norway’s culture of environmental harmony in our troubled world? Exploring the role of Norwegian scholar-activists of the late twentieth century, Peder Anker examines how they portrayed their country as a place of environmental stability in a world filled with tension. In contrast with societies dirtied by the hot and cold wars of the twentieth century, Norway’s power, they argued, lay in the pristine, ideal natural environment of the periphery. Globally, a beautiful Norway came to be contrasted with a polluted world and fashioned as an ecological microcosm for the creation of a better global macrocosm. In this innovative, interdisciplinary history, Anker explores the ways in which ecological concerns were imported via Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, then to be exported from Norway back to the world at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Reviews
Anders Dunker, “Den norske dobbeltmoralen,” Ny tid, august 2020, p. 4-5. [Page 1], [Page 2]. English edition.
Gregory Ferguson-Cradler, “The Power of the Periphery,” Environment and History, 2020. [PDF]
Hedda Susanne Molland, “Å kle seg i miljønasjonens drakt,” Salongen, May 4, 2021.
Summary in Norwegian
Peder Anker, “Periferiens makt: Historia om miljøvitenskapen,” Syn og segn, 3:126 (2020), 69-75.
Blog-post
“Cabin Lockout“, Cambridge blog, Sept. 30 2020.
Book talks
Venice Biennale 2021, May 21, 2021. [Video]
Environmental History Week, April 19. 2021.
The National Library of Norway, April 12. 2021
Department of History, University of Bergen, Feb. 18, 2021.
Department of Philosophy, NTNU Trondheim, Feb. 9 2021
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Jan. 21, 2021.
The Greenhouse, University of Stavanger, Nov. 2, 2020. [Video]
History of Science Society’s Annual Meeting, Oct. 8, 2020. [Video]
Institute of Public Knowledge, New York University, Oct. 6 2020. [Video]
Get the book
US $ | Eur € | Brit £ | Can $ | Open Access (free download).
My review of Climate in Motion
Deborah R. Coen, Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
H-Environment Roundtable Reviews, Jan. 17., 2020. [PDF]
Gas and Bees: An Evident Proclamation
“Gas and Bees: An Evident Proclamation” by Anna Bokov with Nina Edwards Anker, Peder Anker, Mitch Joachim, in Mitchell Joachim and Maria Aiolova, Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities, (Barcelona: Actar, 2019), 36-38.
Get the book here.
Computing Environmental Design
“Computing Environmental Design,” Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, 1945-1980, Theodora Vardouli and Olga Touloumi (eds.), (London: Routledge, 2019), 15-34.
Read Ebook online here (requires library access).
This is the long version of this article. Download PDF of the article here.
Abstract
In December 1964 the Boston Architectural Center organizedthe first conference on the role of computers in architecture – an issue that designers had been pondering since the 1950s. The questionat stake in such debates had been the relationship between artists and machines. Environmental design proved to be an unlikely question that emerged in the discussion, with architect and designer Serge Chermayeff noting that with computers environmental complexities could now come under the purview of architecture. Only a year earlier Chermayeff had published the seminal book Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanismwith Christopher Alexander, wherethe two authors had argued for a humanism that placed environmental concerns at the forefront. At the conference Chermayeff argued that computers constituted a critical tool for analyzing and comprehending environmental complexity, allowing for the integration of the built within the natural environment. “Our survival depends upon our ability to master new complexities” he argued, “with the best technology at our disposal.” This optimism with respect to how computers could help in solving environmental problems was shared among modernist designers, most notably by Richard Buckminster Fuller, but also among ecologists and biologists of the period. Computers could order both the human and natural environment using the same language, thus bringing landscape and architectural design in dialogue. Yet computers of the time were cumbersome to work with and getting access to them was not a matter of course. The architects’ musings about computers ultimately had to do with imagined futures for the design disciplinesand not so much thepractical exigencies of the time. By focusing on Serge Chermayeff’s critical response to the introduction of computers as tools for grasping and communicating complexity, this paper will interrogate the emergence ofcomplexity as an aesthetic and design problem, formative for the introduction of computing to architectural design.
My review of Environmental Design
Avigail Sachs, Environmental Design: Architecture, Politics and Science in Postwar America (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2018).
Journal of Architectural Education, Nov. 8., 2019.
Computing Environmental Design
“Computing Environmental Design,” in The Culture of Nature in the History of Design, Kjetil Fallan (ed.), (London: Routledge, 2019), 44-57.
This is the short version of this article. Download PDF here.
Abstract
In December 1964 the Boston Architectural Center organizedthe first conference on the role of computers in architecture – an issue that designers had been pondering since the 1950s. The questionat stake in such debates had been the relationship between artists and machines. Environmental design proved to be an unlikely question that emerged in the discussion, with architect and designer Serge Chermayeff noting that with computers environmental complexities could now come under the purview of architecture. Only a year earlier Chermayeff had published the seminal book Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanismwith Christopher Alexander, wherethe two authors had argued for a humanism that placed environmental concerns at the forefront. At the conference Chermayeff argued that computers constituted a critical tool for analyzing and comprehending environmental complexity, allowing for the integration of the built within the natural environment. “Our survival depends upon our ability to master new complexities” he argued, “with the best technology at our disposal.” This optimism with respect to how computers could help in solving environmental problems was shared among modernist designers, most notably by Richard Buckminster Fuller, but also among ecologists and biologists of the period. Computers could order both the human and natural environment using the same language, thus bringing landscape and architectural design in dialogue. Yet computers of the time were cumbersome to work with and getting access to them was not a matter of course. The architects’ musings about computers ultimately had to do with imagined futures for the design disciplinesand not so much thepractical exigencies of the time. By focusing on Serge Chermayeff’s critical response to the introduction of computers as tools for grasping and communicating complexity, this paper will interrogate the emergence ofcomplexity as an aesthetic and design problem, formative for the introduction of computing to architectural design.
Environmental and Climate History: The Role of History in Society
I’m teaching a PhD course at the University of Oslo for the Norwegian Graduate School in History: “Environmental and Climate History: The Role of History in Society”, December 16-18, 2019.
Read the report from the course here.
Collapse: Climate, Cities & Culture Berlin
The COLLAPSE: CLIMATE, CITIES and CULTURE exhibition focuses on the design/artist community’s response to environmental urgency, using architectural models, design prototypes, drawings, and art to frame and advance this vitally important conversation. We will contrast and compare examples of design from central Europe to show efforts to find solutions for our current state of planetary peril. The practices and projects selected for this exhibition come from different disciplines and operate at multiple scales, in a range of forms—constructed works, materials and systems research, community development, and speculation. These diverse projects are joined by their shared focus on improving the health and well-being of our fragile planet and all of its occupants. Design will help to determine how we face our current and future collapse.
Berlin NYU at St. Agnes, Alexandrinenstraße 118
June 6-July 11, 2019.
My review of Images of Egypt
Mari Lending, Eirik Arff Gulseth Bøhn, Tim Anstey (eds.), Images of Egypt, (Oslo: Pax, 2018).
Arkitketur N, 101 (2019), 112.
Download PDF (in Norwegian)
My review of Malarial Subjects
Rohan Deb Roy, Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820–1909. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
