Architecture as Catalyst 2019 | Extended Communities of Practice

The wachusko weesti project is a community-led collaboration between an interdisciplinary research team (including Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics, professionals and students) and First Nation leadership and community members. The project addresses two critical issues that affect First Nation communities: inadequate access to safe water, and a shortage of adequate housing. It is a mobile, off-grid and sustainable washroom and kitchen unit, identified as a priority by OCN community members as a critical piece of infrastructure for land defense and remote house building. Participants will explore material and assembly concepts attached to Indigenous material cultures, deployable “pop-up” architectures, and will test spatial packing logics and community-oriented construction systems to make a “micro,” ATV-pullable, Wachusko weesti basecamp unit.

Following the September 2017 landfall of Hurricane Maria, millions of Americans awoke to an island devastated by wind and water—an altered landscape of fallen trees, toppled transmission lines, and broken shelters. In the months that followed, most were left stranded without power, communication, or adequate support. Today, many communities are still suffering from the effects of the neglected infrastructural systems that Maria exposed. In response to this plight, a group of researchers at the University of Puerto Rico organized a team to develop and construct a solar-powered charging station to be used in disconnected communities. The original OASIS de Luz was installed in Jayuya, Puerto Rico in November 2017 and another was built in Borinquen in Caguas. The Catalyst 2019 project builds on these ideas and extends the project’s community of practice in an effort to create a system of resilient pods that can be programmed and deployed across the archipelago of Puerto Rico (and beyond) to provide critical infrastructure to those in need.

This workshop takes a deeper dive into the material culture of two indigenous communities from Western Minnesota through examination and engagement with boat making in the Micronesian context (outrigger canoes) and the Dakota context (birchbark canoes and/or dugout canoes). Participants will engage with materials and making not as a process of forcing ideas on to matter but as an experience of joining the forces of matter in improvisation. This workshop joins the work of the interdisciplinary Grand Challenge project, Back to Indigenous Futures: Cultural Revitalization and Sustainability through Trans-Indigenous Partnerships, Participatory Design, and Embodied Computing, and builds on the 2018 Catalyst exploration with the Micronesian communities in envisioning their emerging needs around building and landscapes. Participants will collaborate and learn with professors and students from American Indian Studies and Computer Science and Engineering and technology experts. This final result will be a traveling exhibit of boat cultures from the Catalyst work.

Envision Community is a dignified and diverse community from across the housing spectrum, providing much-needed housing for people experiencing homelessness. Learning from this model will teach valuable information about the role of health care in housing. Traditional affordable housing projects start with the building design and work backward to raise the money. Catalyst 2019 will flip that model by starting with the dollars that are sustainably available and then designed at that price point. The Envision project applies the human-centered design process at every step to ensure the housing and community are co-created with the people who are most impacted. Working with an extended community of practice that includes members of the Street Voices of Change, doctors, architects, affordable housing developers, policymakers, and academics participants will begin constructing the initial prototype for the Envision Community, and through this making finalize several key design and assembly aspects of the project.