Territorial mapping in overlaid layers, locating the resources of the surrounding landscape.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF BLACK GROUSE: a scenario of rural continuity from the resources within
Master’s Degree Project
2026
This project investigates rural continuity through the resource systems already present within a place. It is situated in Nattavaara, a small shrinking inland village in Norrbotten, where practices of hunting, fishing and foraging have long shaped life. Through territorial mapping, 1:1 documentation and a tasting menu as method, it traces the chain from landscape to plate and identifies a network of existing structures across the village. The main intervention transforms the old arbetsstuga into a cluster of rooms for preparing and sharing local resources, organised through temperature as a spatial principle.
The research interest stems from the ongoing decline of small inland settlements in the north of Sweden, which are losing population as work and services move to larger towns. The forms of domestic and working life particular to this region, bound to the landscape and its seasons, have remained largely outside architectural attention.
The project is examined through Nattavaara, an inland village along Malmbanan in Norrbotten, and draws on theories of place-bound dwelling and on the notion of terroir, the idea that a resource carries the conditions of the place it comes from, and positions the northern domestic landscape as a system in which the dwelling and the land around it belong together.
The meal serves as an analytical lens, tracing local dishes back to the ingredients, practices and structures they depend on. These resource practices are documented at the scale of the body and the hand, together with a mapping of the surrounding territory in overlaid layers. What emerges is a network of resource-producing landscapes and supporting structures, yet within Nattavaara, a place where what the landscape provides can be gathered, processed and shared remains missing.
In response, the project transforms the arbetsstuga into such a place. Temperature, a resource intrinsic to the site, becomes the primary driver of its spatial organisation, and the building is proposed as one node within a wider structural network already present in the village - växthus, jordkällare, rökstugor, hönsgårdar.
The work offers a scenario, suggesting that the conditions for continuity are present and that an architecture can be drawn from them, while the method, though not its site-specific result, might be carried to other rural contexts.
Diagram of the tasting menu, tracing local dishes back to the resource activities and structures these require.
1:1 documentation, tracing the practice of black grouse from hunt to preparation.
Thermal matrix, categorising selected rooms by temperature and bodily activity to determine their placement within the building horizontally and in plan.
Section showing seasonal inhabitation by temperature. The kitchen forms a warm core at the base; as heat rises, life follows - upward in winter, outdoors or downward in summer.
The architecture of black grouse, told as a sequence: hunted locally, brought to the arbetsstuga, hung, prepared by residents, and shared with visitors.
