Extreme Sites is an exploratory research platform that promotes multidisciplinary research on territories and sites deeply transformed by human activity and experiencing different tensions. Extreme Sites consists of an assembly of places, buildings and territories undergoing severe conditions and transition processes at the two extremes of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula and the Baltic. The set of projects that comprise it is composed of concrete cases that share the status of contested heritage, or unwanted legacy, corresponding fundamentally to post-Second World War legacies.
Research in Architecture, Art and Heritage tends to focus on objects, authors and documentation of exceptional quality, tending not to consider the entropic processes of places in transition, decay, contamination, or even the various appropriations and transformations over time, categorizing places in transition as minor, vacant or expectant. Through an approach that crosses knowledge (and researchers) from the fields of architecture, geography and landscape architecture, using methodologies from ethnography, visual and urban cultures - such as fieldwork, visual essay, critical cartography, short documentary or curation - the Extreme Sites research platform strives to expand the characterization and representations of case studies, promoting debate and knowledge about sites whose extreme conditions go beyond the norm.
The constellation of cases includes: deindustrialized and post-industrial spaces, places undergoing renegotiation of borders and demilitarized sites, open spaces and contaminated land, in a diversity of examples that include: industrial remnants [wp1], former Soviet monuments [wp2], batteries and bunkers [wp3], refinery board [wp4]. The research seeks to produce evidence of the relationship between the broad life cycles of architecture and the environment, relating them to those of the economy, politics (and geopolitics), heritage and/or the environment, contributing to broadening the understanding of the role of architecture in society and its impacts on the planet.
The adopted approach embraces the current condition and circumstances of each place, which is studied through fieldwork and, when available, through sources of historical documentation. The research results in the writing of essays and chapters, as well as public events of a cultural nature, supporting the launch of longer-term research projects, as well as supporting the development of Doctorate and Master's projects. The Extreme Sites platform also aims to reveal to the wider public places and sites that are often inaccessible, with the aim of raising society's awareness of difficult legacies and heritage that require attention and intervention.