Indigenous Design: The Intersection of Racial Justice and Design

Indigenous Design: The Intersection of Racial Justice and Design

Wanda Dalla Costa, Principal, Taw Architecture Collective PLLC. Director, Indigenous Design Collaborative. 

Wednesday, September 8th
4:00pm - 5:00pm EST / 1:00pm - 2:00pm PST

Credits: 1 LU HSW

Co-sponsored by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Committee

Session Description:

Indigenous design is part of the collective reimaging underway in the field of architecture. Utilizing assets such as stories, rituals, values, history, and knowledge, Indigenous design offers a pathway that is inclusive and equitable, and at the same time, brings forward new meanings, new ways of working and new responsibilities. Indigenous design expands the reservoirs of inspiration typically available to architects, while offering a host of collaborative practices, that prioritize place-specific and value-based design.

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn how indigenous belief systems build and maintain connections with the land and environment, offering a broader system of metrics beyond aesthetics and economics.
2. Through the lens of two-eyed seeing (indigenous and western thinking), engage the topic of Indigenous futurity, a new discourse which blends the past, present and future, toward innovative forward-thinking solutions.
3. Understand how the Indigenous Placekeeping Framework returns community power and ownership, while offering insight on collaborative methods.
4. Learn how Indigenous-centric designs offer a new way to think of sustainability, combining passive design, regionalism and climatic resiliency toward new solutions.

Speaker Bio:

Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, LEED A.P. is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. She is an architect, an Institute professor and a YBCA 100 2019 honoree, an award which celebrates people, organizations, and movements shifting culture through ideas, their art, and their activism. At Arizona State University, she is the director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative, a community-driven design and construction program, which brings together tribal community members, industry and a multidisciplinary team of ASU students and faculty to co-design solutions for tribal communities. She is also an Institute / Associate Professor, jointly appointed in Architecture and Construction. Dalla Costa was part of Unceded at the 2018 Venice Biennale where she joined 18 Indigenous architects from across Turtle Island to share an Indigenous vision of the future. Her firm, Tawaw Architecture Collective PLLC (www.tawarc.com) works across North America, and is based in Phoenix.