Arctic Practices: Design for a Changing World emerges at a critical juncture wherein the very stability of Arctic ecosystems hangs in a precarious balance induced, almost entirely, by humans. This volume assembles forty-six contributors—designers, educators, artists, photographers, filmmakers, some Indigenous, some residents, and some visitors to the Circumpolar North—to create a polyvocal assembly of Arctic practices.

As a geographical reality, conceptual framework, and region with shared physical characteristics, the Arctic emerges from a complex intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems, colonial histories, and scientific paradigms. From early Greek measurements of Polaris’s position to today’s satellite monitoring of rapidly retreating ice sheets, understanding of this region has been shaped by successive waves of external observation and internal resistance. This tension between ways of knowing—between Traditional Knowledge holders and (often Western) scientific frameworks—lies at the heart of contemporary Arctic discourse and design practice.

Arctic Practices stands as both documentation and provocation—an attempt to record current practices while simultaneously imagining new possibilities for Arctic design in an age of crisis. By bringing diverse voices and perspectives together, we hope to contribute to an emerging discourse that recognizes the urgency of climate action and the necessity of anticolonial practice in Arctic contexts. This volume thus represents not an endpoint but rather a series of moments in an ongoing process of learning and unlearning. This process must continue as we collectively face the challenges of climate change and anticolonial reconciliation in Arctic contexts. Through this polyvocal assembly, we hope to open new possibilities for meaningful design interventions across northern lands, seas, skies, and ice, always mindful of both the urgency of our present moment and the weight of historical injustices that have shaped these landscapes and the lives lived with them.