A new documentary profiles Indigenous architects and how they incorporate their communities into their designs. There will be a screening of “From Earth to Sky” at ASU later today.
One of the architects featured in the film is Wanda Dalla Costa, a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, Canada and director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative at ASU.
Dalla Costa joined The Show to talk about how she first got interested in architecture, and realized it was something she could pursue as a career.
Full conversation
WANDA DALLA COSTA: Well, it was a roundabout route. I know a lot of people share the story that they’ve always dreamed of being an architect when they were little. That was not the case. I did have a handy father who was nailing things and reconstructing things on our property, and that was helpful. But what I did is after I finished my undergrad, I heard when I was working — I was at 14, 15 — and I heard someone talking about doing an adventure, backpacking adventure around the world.
And I was very intrigued. No one from where I grew up — you know, I’m first generation to university — no one from where I grew up was going on a backpacking trip around the world. I listened very intently to these two girls with their Lonely Planet guides, heading to Australia. And a couple of years after, I saved enough money after I finished my undergraduate degree and went traveling.
And it was through that trip, which lasted — it was supposed to be six months. It lasted seven years. And through that journey, I realized that I was really drawn to urban spaces, buildings, public spaces and really looking at my roots back home. My grandmother, my mother grew up on a reservation or reserve up in Canada.
And just seeing that disconnect between people and their environments, and I didn’t see that disconnect while I was overseas. And so that’s what gave me the idea: Could I reconnect culture and the built environment?
MARK BRODIE: That’s really interesting. I mean, how much do you try to think about those kinds of things, like how much do you think about, for example, your mother and grandmother and where they grew up in the lives that they led as you are designing buildings in more urban spaces?
DALLA COSTA: I think it’s really, it’s innate in this profession because all of those early experiences that we have as architects impact the way we look through this lens of architecture and create these spaces.
BRODIE: So how do those experiences manifest themselves in your designs now?
DALLA COSTA: Well, I think, you know, the love of open space nature. And of course, you know that indigenous people have a kinship relationship with nature. You know, we talk about Father Sky, Mother Earth, Grandfather Moon, Sun. There’s there’s a lot of kinship terms in our natural environment. And so I think part of the foundation of how we create design is that alignment with place, with sun, with climate, with the materials of a place, with the history of a place.
And I think that’s how it impacts it. And it’s, I guess, instructive to our practice so much that we’ve actually created something called the Indigenous Placekeeping Framework. And it’s a methodology that we use to allow people to get closer to what that context is, what that history is of these wonderful spaces and places that exist throughout the world.
BRODIE: Are those kinds of ideas unique to indigenous architects, do you think, or are they things that architects in general are thinking about?
DALLA COSTA: I think there’s a transformation happening right now. For those listeners that study or are interested in architecture, there was a big movement when it started about, I don’t know, 70 years ago called modernism. And that movement was about creating almost a homogenous design aesthetic that was originating in Europe.
And it was very modern, very clean lines and kind of white boxes. And that was the era that I was educated in architecture school. Which of course doesn’t fly. Those buildings don’t relate to many places in the world, but that’s what we were being taught.
And so I think right now there’s a shift in the field where we realize, OK, that was fun. It was a fad. It was a moment in time in the field of architecture. But there are other ways to imagine spaces. And I think if we can attune more to the people, the place, the climate, I think this would do us all well for survival on this planet.
So I think the movement is coming. It’s called human-centered design, is one aspect that I think Indigenous design falls really well within because we’re using the the human as the main purpose. It’s not about winning an award. It’s not about getting into the magazines. It’s really about making sure these spaces are conducive to the people who will occupy them eventually.
There’s also a big push to ecological design right now. And again, Indigenous design is a really beautiful lens because of this kinship relationship.
BRODIE: It kind of sounds what like what you’re describing is what we hear a lot of architects talking about in terms of especially trying to deal with things like climate change, especially in a place like the Phoenix area, where it’s increasingly getting warmer.
How can we use design, how can we use architecture to make buildings more resilient and maybe bring down cooling costs and make things more comfortable for the people living or working inside those buildings? It sounds very much like what you were just describing.
DALLA COSTA: Absolutely. And we’ve actually worked with a local tribe here in Arizona, the Gila River Indian Community. And you’re absolutely right. It was eye opening. We went and studied their traditional architecture.
And they don’t just have one type of building. Where I come from, I’m Plains Cree, so we come from the teepee. We’re teepee builders. But the Gila River people don’t have just a singular type of building that they lived in in this climate that goes from very large extremes from winter to summer.
And so they invented, we studied about 15 different prototypes that they had. And so I do think that the traditional building techniques in this region and, I’m guessing, if we did research in all the other regions, would have lessons for all architects.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that when you were a child, architecture wasn’t really on your radar. I’m wondering how much of that had to do with the fact that there weren’t many people who maybe came from where you came from and had your background and maybe looked like you who were doing that kind of job.
DALLA COSTA: That is absolutely right. We had social workers. We had teachers as an example. My mother was a cultural instructor. So when kids come into the city and they are losing their culture because of the move to the city, she would help bring culture back into the classroom for the kids. She wasn’t a trained teacher, but she was more of a cultural instructor.
And really, those are the role models that we had. That was it. So it is really hard to imagine becoming something when you don’t have any examples around you.
BRODIE: Given that, how important is it to you that now you are doing this job to try to make it so that children from your community, with similar backgrounds to you see that you are doing this and succeeding at it and that this is a viable option?
DALLA COSTA: Absolutely. It’s a big part of our work. So in particularly in my teaching, the teaching part of my day, we have changed the curriculum at ASU to make it more meaningful for students, for young Indigenous students, in the hope that they will choose the profession. And of course, me standing up in front, sitting at the podium, it changes the dynamics because those kids will say, “You know what, I can do this too. She did it.” And I would say that I’m not alone.
