A space of possibility, plurality, relationality, collaboration, spatial agency, and resilience.
Indigenous Ways of Being/Doing
We start each project by spending time in community, building relationships, but with the purpose of connecting with value systems, lifeways, norms and worldviews.
Participatory Design
Equally important to the success of each
project, is a pathway that will lead to a truly
collaborative process. We have a series of
methods that we use to engage community,
urban or rural.
Participatory Design
Equally important to the success of each
project, is a pathway that will lead to a truly
collaborative process. We have a series of
methods that we use to engage community,
urban or rural.
Mentorship
The field remains vastly underrepresented in terms of diversity. In addition to mentoring recent graduates, we bring our Indigenous designers to inspire youth towards a career in architecture.
Multi-Generational Approach
Our interns work alongside a group of Elders, who offer an ethical compass for our work.
Earth-Centered Design
We start each project with the ingenuity of our ancestors – sun paths, directionality, climatic understanding and familiar tectonics/form. Combined with principles of localization (available materials, labor and infrastructures) the approach offers an economical and ecological approach to design.
Indigenous Ways of Knowing
All modes of knowledge should be found in indigenous architecture: traditional, handed down, based on stories and experiences of a people over time; empirical, gained through careful observation and practice over time; and revealed, gained through vision, ritual and ceremony.
