Sami Spatial Agency: Advancing Sami Spatial Planning through Participatory Design

Sami Spatial Agency: Advancing Sami Spatial Planning through Participatory Design is a research project following Oadjut, the nomadic Sami art institution Verdde's initiative working towards the first public building in Giron/Kiruna designed on Sami terms.

Sami culture has long been defined by a careful relationship with land — leaving few permanent traces, prioritizing future generations over accumulated built heritage. This has made Sami presence easy to overlook in urban landscapes, particularly as Giron undergoes rapid transformation driven by mining and urban expansion that threatens to further displace Sami communities and erase Sami cultural markers.

Oadjut responds to this by asking how public architecture can be built from a Sami perspective — drawing on building traditions, material cycles, and Sami design principles developed together with Sami architect Eveliina Sarapää, cultural bearers, and local communities. Sami Spatial Agency works alongside this process, examining and articulating what contemporary Sami architecture is and can be, situated within a growing discourse on Sami spatial and cultural revitalization. The research aims to contribute to strengthen Sami visibility and inclusion in urban development in Sápmi.

The collaboration brings together Verdde, which leads the Oadjut process, and architecture researchers at Luleå University of Technology. The two-year research project, funded by Formas, is conducted by Runa Johannessen, Meryem Saadi and Agatino Rizzo at LTU, together with Maria Svonni and Ellen B. Dalbakk from Verdde.