Why Cavaliers Are Chilling in the Urban Tundra

What might seem at a quick glance to be University of Virginia students on a snowy Lawn is actually a group of UVA students bundled up to brave the cold in the United States’ northernmost town, Utqiaġvik, Alaska.

The students are the latest group from UVA’s School of Architecture to contribute to a longstanding research collaboration between the school’s Arctic Design Group and the local communities in Alaska’s North Slope Borough, primarily the Iñupiat, a group of Alaskan natives. Since 2018, UVA architecture professors and Arctic Design Group co-directors Leena Cho and Matthew Jull have led undergraduate and graduate students in collaborative research into community infrastructure and resilience in one of the world’s fastest-warming places, a city that houses more than 4,000 people. 

As the air warms and holds more moisture, it is creating more snow and meltwater on the ground. “If you have a place that relied on the ground being frozen regularly and now you were to warm all of the ground, it can get quite mushy,” said Jull, an associate professor of architecture.

Growing up in Hong Kong, Joyce Fong had never experienced anything like the Arctic cold. Now in her final year as a master’s degree candidate in landscape architecture, she is writing a thesis on flood planning. 

“Summers are getting longer and winters shorter, so the snow melts faster and leads to more water on the ground,” she said. “First, it will damage and degrade permafrost and the tundra landscape faster and create lots of issues for people living there.”

Before visiting, Fong’s team analyzed data using high-resolution satellite images to understand what the vegetation looked like on the ground. Analyzing a year’s worth of imagery allowed the team to study how snow accumulated and melted in different areas over time.

Jull and Cho, an associate professor of landscape architecture, lead a group of undergraduate and graduate students in their final year in a research studio, a research class required for graduating. Before visiting, the students were put into groups to research one of the key infrastructure issues community members identified.

“A significant benefit of the studios is their ability to produce diverse and scalable outcomes,” Cho said. “Students from architecture, landscape architecture and urban design bring differing perspectives, exploring solutions that are tested through field studies and community engagement.”

The Arctic Design Group, a collaboration of UVA professors and researchers, has worked for years on climate resilience in Alaska. In 2020, the U.S. National Science Foundation awarded the group $3 million to design aquatic and geotechnical sensors placed throughout Utqiaġvik to help design future buildings and infrastructure. 

Over the years, they have received several NSF grants and funding from UVA’s Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, the Jefferson Trust and the Environmental Institute. Last October, the institute announced that the Arctic Research Center would be its third climate collaborative.

Ari Bell, a third-year graduate student in UVA’s landscape architecture program, started his career wanting to respond to the climate crisis. His team looked at snow and meltwater management, researching the flow of water throughout the tundra landscape and issues melting snow causes, especially during the spring, when most of the snow piles melt.

The challenge of adapting structural or drainage solutions developed in other regions to a permafrost landscape is compounded by the difficulty of transporting materials to a city with limited infrastructure connecting it to the mainland U.S.

Material like gravel can help keep the ground more stable when the so-called “melt season” begins, but it must be transported to the community. Weather restrictions also often mean transporting materials must wait for the two summer months when supplies can be shipped or barged in, Bell said. 

“It has definitely expanded my conception of what a United States city looks like,” Bell said. “Much of Utqiaġvik life, in terms of housing and urban infrastructure, has been radically transformed by imported colonial ideas.”

Third-year Master of Architecture candidate Margaret Saunders, who had never been to Alaska before this project, said she appreciated learning how to collaborate respectfully with communities that were different from her own, focusing on humility without imposing ideas.

The students visited the community’s public works facility, landfills and the home of a whaling captain. 

“It’s covered in snow for a majority of the year, but then once the snow starts to melt and the ice and snow breaks up, that can be really kind of a risky time for their infrastructure, because that’s when things start to get wobbly, and the ground is not as stable in that in that moment,” Saunders said.

Saunders and her peers used satellite imagery to track melting water across town, identifying where it flows or pools, in order to develop more effective plans for managing the buildup. 

“It felt like something monumental happened every day,” said Katherine Shi, a fourth-year architecture undergraduate student. “We got to see the first snow and witness them bring in the first whales.” The Iñupiat people rely on subsistence whaling, which is allowed for cultural reasons and to sustain their needs.

She laughed remembering how the students were easily identified as outsiders because they were the only people walking around town. “People would yell ‘hello’ from their cars or ATVs, which are a popular way to get around,” Shi said.