PROJECT Old Crow Community Centre, Old Crow, Yukon 

ARCHITECT Kobayashi + Zedda Architects 

TEXT Adele Weder 

PHOTOS Andrew Latreille 

Arriving in Old Crow is like entering another country. Tucked into the northwest corner of Yukon, this tiny village of 280 citizens of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation is accessible only by air, or—for intrepid seafarers—along the adjacent Porcupine River. A grocery store is the sole commercial outlet. All-terrain vehicles putter through a network of dirt roads lined with simple wood houses in various stages of weathering, many festooned with caribou antlers. 

In this otherworldly hamlet, Old Crow’s new Darius Elias Community Centre, designed by Kobayashi Zedda Architects (KZA), stands out like a spaceship. 

From the road, the building reads like a giant cylinder clad in wood slats. From the waterfront side, it flexes inward, roughly framing the outdoor space into a naturalistic courtyard and subtly echoing the meandering river. On a balmy late-summer evening, a young man and woman and their dalmatian are hanging out around the building—under the building, actually. Like almost all structures built in the Arctic, the Centre is raised above the ground so that its warmth does not melt the top layer of permafrost that sheathes the Arctic. This building is raised even higher than the norm, partly to account for the periodic flooding of Porcupine River. Architect Antonio Zedda notes that the building’s elevated condition creates “a completely different planar experience”—inside and out. 

The Centre comprises a community hall, Elders’ lounge, industrial kitchen, games room, meeting spaces, offices, and exercise room. The main space—the large, circular hall—hosts the Vuntut Nation’s assemblies, which include intense discussions, heritage dances, bonding, and reconnecting. Although Old Crow is the current home base of the Vuntut, the Nation’s thousand citizens are dispersed across Yukon. A few times a year, those citizens gather and reconnect in the large hall. “It’s a beautiful space for dancing,” observes Vuntut Gwitchin Chief Pauline Frost. The adjoining kitchen—industrial in both size and equipment calibre—runs at full steam during those events to provide the accompanying traditional feasts. 

The oblique angles and concentric double circle of the ceiling’s radiating structural beams make the space feel alive and active even when empty, and emphasize the centrifugal force of the plan. 

At the other end of the structure, the spacious exercise room offers a stunning panoramic vista of the river, and doubles as a repository for traditional costume-making materials, with a hundred-plus bolts of fabric stacked floor-to-ceiling along one wall. The textiles are end-rolls donated to the community for use by local seamstresses. While it would be incongruous for a big-city gym, this juxtaposition makes perfect sense for a tiny community reclaiming its heritage crafts.

KZA also designed the John Tizya Cultural Centre a few dozen metres down the road, a rectangular mass sheathed in corrugated metal. The Cultural Centre serves as a venue for locals and visitors to explore Vuntut Gwitchin culture and history. That compact and superbly designed building, like the new Community Centre, resulted from the advocacy of Chief Frost, who successfully lobbied for these and other new buildings while serving as the Vuntut Gwitchin’s MLA from 2016 to 2021. She was sworn in as Chief last year, in the same Community Hall that she helped bring to fruition. 

The Community Centre presents an architectural contrast to KZA’s Cultural Centre, both in terms of massing and material. “The clients wanted a building clad in wood, period,” recalls Zedda. “Not metal, nor anything simulating wood. That was the challenge for us; the reality in Yukon is that wood does not last long because of the extreme sun and extreme temperatures.” In response, the design team researched an array of materials, finally settling on modified pinewood by Kebony, a Norwegian wood producer. Infused with an alcohol solution that preserves the wood, Kebony pine will naturally weather into a silvery hue over time, but will not decompose.

To many locals, the building is shaped like a snowshoe—an Aih in Gwichin. Others, like Vuntut Gwitchin Deputy Chief Harold Frost, tell me it’s designed to resemble a caribou trap. To this reporter, as a descendant of Prairie settlers, the plan evokes a leather waterskin. Read into it what you will. Drum? Snowshoe? Caribou trap? “It’s all those things,” says Zedda. “We don’t typically design things that reference something specific.” When the architects showed the floor plans to community members, he recalls, “they started to infer ideas of what it resembled.” 

For Zedda, the original community hall—a wooden octagon that still stands, vacant and rotting, beside the new structure—was the biggest driver. “The idea was to capture the essence of that building and its [interior] space in the newer building,” he says. The concept of circularity, rather than any specific representation, is at the heart of the design, echoing Indigenous respect for the cycle of life.

But here is the uncomfortable question: is this building too big, and too state-of-the-art? For Chief Frost, the biggest challenge of the Community Centre is its high heating costs. That is not an architectural failing per se: the design team followed the design brief in terms of size, but few buildings of this size and scope could keep their energy costs low in an Arctic locale with viciously cold winters. The huge circular space that is so highly appropriate and welcoming for the quarterly gatherings of the Vuntut Nation is otherwise often vacant. 

Zedda argues that our system of consistent building-code application and aggressive energy targets is problematic for remote places like Old Crow, with populations so small that residents are unlikely to have the skill sets to address and maintain the technical issues and features. “In terms of codes and standards that affect building systems such as mechanical heating and ventilation, for example, the code requirements tend to overly complicate the systems without understanding the context in which they are being placed,” he says. “This needs to be revisited. Otherwise, highly complex and efficient systems, if not operated properly, tend to perform poorly and are more expensive to operate.”

The time has come, he argues, to question whether it’s imperative in every instance to follow every code requirement when in certain communities it might be inappropriate or cost-prohibitive. “And by inappropriate or cost-prohibitive,” he clarifies, “we are not talking about life safety items, for which there should be no flexibility.  What’s needed is more consideration for the immediate geographic and cultural context.” 

He cites a real-life example from a past project in Old Crow: “The client asked why we needed to include a wheelchair ramp in the building design. Being on permafrost, the raised building resulted in a steel ramp system that was over 12 metres long with a price tag of over $50,000.” The client told Zedda that a ramp wasn’t strictly necessary, since on the rare occasions when someone would need assistance to enter and exit the building, others in this tightly-knit community would step up to help. “They would never leave an Elder or mobility-challenged individual to navigate these spaces and places on their own,” says Zedda. “I was in awe hearing this.”   

What are the fixes for the Darius Elias Community Centre and buildings like it? An architectural solution—unfeasible now, but perhaps viable with some future technology—is crafting a means to expand and contract a building’s capacity in response to shifting needs. As for the challenge of making and maintaining buildings in small and isolated places, it may be time to consider encouraging flexibility with certain code requirements and energy targets in such communities. 

Ultimately, for the Vuntut Gwitchin, the Darius Elias Community Centre is not just a functional amenity, but an existential one. Their periodic gatherings are essential as a cultural reaffirmation, both amongst their Nation’s citizens and to the outside world. “We were essentially the forgotten community, because of our remoteness and social isolation,” says Chief Frost. “We didn’t have anything before. But what’s happened here in the last six or seven years is so amazing.”

Adele Weder is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect. KZA Architects contributed a portion of the travel costs for this article.

CLIENT Vuntut Gwitchin Government | ARCHITECT TEAM Antonio Zedda (MRAIC), Chris Chevalier, Sheelah Tolton, Phillippe Gregoire, David Tolkamp | STRUCTURAL Ennova Structural Engineers Inc | MECHANICAL Williams Engineering Canada; Building Systems Engineering | ELECTRICAL Williams Engineering Canada | CONTRACTOR Johnston Builders Ltd. | FOOD SERVICES Lisa Bell & Associates | ENERGY MODELlING Morrison Hershfield (now Stantec) | SOLAR PV STUDY Green Sun Rising | GEOTECHNICAL EBA/TetraTech | AREA 940 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION June 2021

As appeared in the November 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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The Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Reports is a new digital series, created in lieu of live lectures for the 2020 Emerging Voices program. While two of the year’s eight winners presented as planned, the remaining six winners produced original videos to share their work after live events were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our work is not just about designing and building. It is about ‘accompanying’ our clients as best we can, from the very beginnings of a project till its final realization,” said the principals to the Architectural League of New York.

The selection process for the two-stage jury included past Emerging Voices winners and other design professionals from across North America, who reviewed work from approximately 50 firms.

This year’s other Emerging Voices recipients are:
Brandon Dake, Andrew Wells
 Dake Wells Architecture, Springfield and Kansas City, MO
Lazbent Pavel Escobedo Amaral, Andrés Soliz Paz
 Escobedo Soliz, Mexico City, Mexico
Casper Mork-Ulnes
 Mork Ulnes Architects, San Francisco, CA and Oslo, Norway
Olalekan Jeyifous
 New York, NY
Miriam Peterson, Nathan Rich 
Peterson Rich Office, New York, NY
Christopher Marcinkoski, Andrew Moddrell
 PORT, Chicago, IL and Philadelphia, PA
Bryan Young 
Young Projects, New York, NY

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ARCHITECT Kobayashi + Zedda Architects

Until recently, the MacBride Museum in Whitehorse was made up of a patchwork of rustic old buildings. Its first home in 1951 was the former telegraph office, built in 1900. In 1967, it expanded into another log building, and added a third building a few years later. An administrative office went up in 2007. The rest of the property—which, in all, occupies five city lots of prime waterfront real estate downtown—contained an outdoor display area, train shed and courtyard.

But despite its large footprint, the museum had under 800 square metres of public exhibit space—not nearly enough for its 40,000-item collection and archives on Yukon First Nations, mammals and birds, and the Klondike Gold Rush.

Then, in 2016, the museum received $6 million in federal and territorial funding for a new 1,500-square-metre addition. Architects Kobayashi + Zedda were commissioned for the project, and proposed a design that boldly cantilevers over the 119-year old telegraph office.

When they released their conceptual renderings, some people called their scheme “ugly” and an “eyesore” on social media. Others said it was too modern or didn’t suit the look of the waterfront. And, not everyone was happy with the price tag (which later increased to about $8 million).

Patricia Cunning, executive director of the MacBride Museum, says much of the early criticism about the design faded once people understood the purpose of the mostly windowless design—to protect artifacts from sunlight—and after the exterior work was completed. “Tons of people talk to me about how beautiful it is,” she says.

Jack Kobayashi of Kobayashi + Zedda says the design reflects Whitehorse’s modern history of mining and industry, in the same way the museum’s collection does. The museum’s façade combines a variety of materials, juxtaposing rust-speckled and shiny corrugated tin siding, cement board that imitates the look of wood while being non-combustible, and copper-painted aluminium panels. On the underside of the cantilever, hexagonal zinc tiles form a pattern reminiscent of wood shingles. The bric-a-brac composition pays homage to the industriousness of Whitehorse’s early founders: prospectors, miners and businesspeople drawn north by the Klondike Gold Rush, who built with scrap materials salvaged from industrial sites.

“The bulk of the museum is metal, because that’s a Yukon vernacular material that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush,” Kobayashi says. “People used whatever they had available to them to clad their houses and put on their roofs.”

Although pathways and green spaces line the Whitehorse waterfront today, it was a different story in 1899, when the townsite was established. Across from where the museum now stands were shipbuilding docks, warehouses and the train station.

The circa-1900 telegraph office resides in its original location and is one of the oldest remaining buildings on the waterfront. Preserving it was a priority. Kobayashi + Zedda originally planned to enclose the structure inside the new building, but later decided it would be better showcased outside. The new three-storey building flanks the north and west sides of the telegraph office, and a cantilevered projection protects the heritage structure from the weather, while allowing for new gallery space in the two floors above.

The age of the museum buildings and the site’s layout—with structures on every corner of the large lot—created a challenge for the architects. They were tasked with upgrading existing infrastructure, designing a new building and seamlessly connecting everything together.

These connections start underground, where the basements of two previously separate buildings were joined, creating a new storage space. At ground level, a large and airy lobby—dubbed Aurora Hall—relocates the museum’s formerly elevated main entrance to street level, improving curb appeal and easing access. Large windows on two sides allow people on the sidewalk to see through the lobby and into the courtyard, where the museum hosts popular live music and storytelling events.

Aurora Hall connects to the 1967 log building, which Kobayshi + Zedda reinforced and opened up to create a “longhouse feel” for the First Nations Gallery. That exhibit now has room to display more than 350 artifacts, compared to the 40 previously on display.

The two new floors above Aurora Hall are treated as a black box, with environmental controls to protect artifacts. Patios on either side of the upper floors provide some relief to the exterior, while showing off a 360-degree view of Whitehorse’s cityscape.

Executive director Patricia Cunning says all the museum’s spaces were designed to be multifunctional. While the work-in-progress top floor will display exhibits about Yukon innovators and icons—politicians, pilots and mountaineers, to name a few—it can double as a venue for cocktail parties and wedding receptions. The second-floor gallery showcases local artists and a rotating selection from the museum’s collection of 1,500 historic photos. Other additions to the museum include a map and reading room, and a “Discovery Zone” where visitors will be able to don a Yukon-made parka and enter a minus-30-degree-Celsius walk-in freezer to experience what a Yukon winter could feel like (notwithstanding the effects of global warming, which is taking place in the North at twice the global rate).

While the freezer will likely be a popular attraction during the summer months, it’s during winter, when darkness prevails, that the exterior of the museum really shines. Outdoor lights—built into the zinc-tiled ceiling of the cantilever—highlight the telegraph office, while dainty lights on the façade trace the Cassiopeia and Big Dipper constellations.

Although the museum advertises year-round hours, it’s unclear if it will be open during regular hours this coming winter. That’s due to an ongoing property tax dispute with the City of Whitehorse. Rick Nielsen, chair of the non-profit museum’s board of directors, told the CBC in April that the museum may have to reduce operations if the city does not forgive $154,000 in owed back taxes.

Despite that unsettling prospect, the museum appears to be more popular than ever. Cunning says visits were up 30 percent in 2018, and another 16 percent as of July of this year. She attributes that to the renovations. “It’s 100 percent because of the building,” she says, adding that one man calls every week to ask when the rest of the exhibits will open (September, she says). “People are keen to see it.”

Karen McColl is a Whitehorse-based writer.

CLIENT MacBride Museum; Patricia Cunning (Director) | ARCHITECT TEAM Jack Kobayashi, Lauren Holmes, David Tolkamp, Vance Fok, Philippe Gregoire, Andrew Malloy | STRUCTURAL Ennova Structural Engineers | MECHANICAL Northern Climate Engineering | ELECTRICAL Dorward Engineering Services | CIVIL NA Jacobsen | LIGHTING Margot Richards | ENERGY Reload Consulting | ACOUSTIC RWDI | CODE Jensen Hughes | HARDWARE Banks Consulting | CONTRACTOR Ketza Construction | AREA 1,477 m² | BUDGET $8.5 M | COMPLETION March 2018

Energy Use

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 103 kWh/m²/year | BENCHMARK (Non-medical institutional/commercial buildings in Canada after 2010, Statistics Canada) 305 kWh/m²/year

The post Historical Overview: MacBride Museum Expansion, Whitehorse, Yukon appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Safe, stable Canada has been a haven for global capital in the recent era of political and financial uncertainty. Its economic prosperity and centrist politics have also made for relatively consistent investment in public infrastructure. The results have yielded record construction activity, but on the flip side, it’s also led to a crisis in housing affordability in many cities. Meanwhile, there are regional concerns to contend with, ranging from the crash in oil and gas prices to Indigenous reconciliation. The effects of the climate emergency are also being felt more strongly each year, with melting permafrost in the north, forest fires in the west, and flooding in eastern Canada.

How do these trends affect architecture? What is on the minds of architects in different regions of Canada? To find out, Canadian Architect spoke to dozens of architects from coast to coast—to coast. Click the images below to read the buzz.

Based on interviews with Andrew Reeves, Anne Cormier, Anne Lissett, Ben Klumper, Bill Semple, Brent Bellamy, Charlene Kovacs, Christine Lolley, Chris Wiebe, Chris Woodford, Cynthia Dovell, Darryl Condon, Derek Kindrachuk, Dustin Couzens, Gavin Affleck, Jack Kobayashi, James Youck, Jeremy Bryant, Jim Anderson, Jim Siemens, Johanna Hurme, John Stephenson, Ksenia Eic, Lawrence Bird, Léo Lejeune, Lindsay Oster, Linus Murphy, Luc Bouliane, Marianne Amodio, Mark Ostry, Maxime Frappier, Monica Adair, Natasha Lebel, Pat Hanson, Peg MacDonald, Randy Cohen, Rayleen Hill, Richard Symonds, Richard Witt, Shafraaz Kaba, Stephen Kopp, Susan Fitzgerald, Ted Watson, Toon Dreessen, and Vivian Manasc.

British Columbia

Alberta

Saskatchewan

Manitoba

Ontario

Quebec

Atlantic

The North

The post State of the Nation appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The Indigenous population is Canada’s fastest growing demographic, with some 1.6 million Indigenous people in the 2016 census, and an anticipated growth to over 2.5 million by 2038. Statistics Canada says that two factors have contributed to this explosion: high fertility rates, but also a greater confidence that is causing more people to identify themselves as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit on the census.

What’s indisputable is that it’s a demographic in need of better architecture, starting from the basic level of housing. One in five Indigenous people lived in a dwelling in need of major repair in 2016, including nearly a third of Inuit living in Inuit Nunangat and almost half of Status First Nations people living on reserves. Close to one fifth of the Indigenous population lived in crowded housing, with a shortfall of bedrooms.

Jack Kobayashi, of Whitehorse-based Kobayashi + Zedda Architects, notes that the housing sector in Northern Canada has been extremely busy in the past five years. “At this time, we are designing residential projects that comprise the entire continuum of housing, including homeless shelters, tiny homes, rental apartments, market condos, seniors’ housing and extended care facilities,” says Kobayashi. To address the severe shortage of housing in Whitehorse, the firm has also developed its own construction arm, 360 Design Build, which has completed several projects, including, most recently, a 14-unit building with micro-sized apartments.

Funding for the majority of Northern projects ultimately comes from federal coffers. “While much of the federal subsidies have been devolved over the years through local government, First Nation governments and First Nation Development Corporations, all paths lead back to the Federal Government,” says Kobayashi. Unfortunately, Ottawa’s schedules don’t always align with the realities of Northern living. “The North operates on annual government funding milestones that revolve around a March 31st year-end. Many projects start and stop on that milestone date,” he says. “This arbitrary date does not align well with the short construction season.”

Architect Bill Semple of NORDEC consulting and design echoes the need for reality checks. “There’s never enough money, and never enough housing getting built. Every year, the backlog gets bigger,” he says. Often, funding is year-to-year, or over a couple of years at most. The lack of long-term funding makes it difficult to build capacity and to plan longer-term strategies.

On the positive side, there seems to be a willingness to develop improved processes. “The conversations between communities and the federal government is much more open now than before,” says Semple. Adds Kobayashi, “Projects coming out of the efforts of First Nation Development Corporations have been consistently rewarding. The Development Corporations operate at arms-length to the First Nations they represent, and are sufficiently nimble in their risk-taking and decision- making ability to become very good clients of architecture in the North.”

A variety of community-centred approaches are seen in the work of Yellowknife-based Taylor Architecture Group. For the Hamlet Office and Community Hall at Kugaaruk, the firm focused on using as much local labour as possible. “We did this by interviewing community members interested in working on the project, acquiring their contact information and skill levels, and then including that in the project’s specifications,” says Ksenia Eic of Taylor Architecture Group. Forty-five percent of the project was constructed by locals. Wood construction was also chosen, in order to use construction equipment already available in the community. “Usually people shy away from using local labour, as they think it will increase the cost, but the amazing thing is that the building tender price ended up being under the budget price—which is very unusual for the North.”

There is opportunity in the North for young architects intrepid enough to move there. Eic completed her student thesis looking at First Nations housing in her home province of New Brunswick, then decided to join Taylor Architectural Group as a way to pursue her interests. “Even as an intern architect, you really get thrown into the middle of things, with a variety of experiences,” she says, recalling how she was exposed to the firm’s highly varied work, from offices and schools, to community centres and arenas. “People think that you can only go to Vancouver or Toronto to find work, but you’re more likely to find an interesting experience by going somewhere more remote.”

All this is happening in the shadow of the significant impacts of the climate crisis: the Arctic is warming almost three times as fast as the rest of the world. “Since my arrival in Yukon, the average annual temperature in some northern communities with permafrost has increased by as much as 4.8 degrees,” says Kobayashi. Thawing permafrost threatens northern infrastructure, since the foundations of many buildings are dependent upon maintaining permafrost in its frozen state. (Buildings are typically raised to allow cold air to circulate over the ground.) “Much of the permafrost in Yukon is just below zero degrees Celsius, and therefore very susceptible to even slight increases in warming temperatures,” says Kobayashi.

While there is a small contingent of registered architects in the North, some firms from southern cities have developed a long history of working with Indigenous communities, among them, Edmonton-based Manasc Isaac. “We are working more than ever with First Nations, and are developing deeper and more enduring relationships with the many First Nations and Métis communities that we work with,” says Vivian Manasc, whose current work includes a number of First Nations schools in Alberta and gathering centres at Métis Crossing (Alberta), Salt River (Northwest Territories), and Kwanlin Dün (Yukon). “Our approach is informed as much as possible by Indigenous ways of being and knowing and of relationships with the land.”

Conversations with Indigenous clients have the potential to do more than meet the challenge of providing adequate housing, as immense as that goal may already be. “First Nations have a close relationship with the land, they understand how it has inherent richness, they have spent countless generations living on it,” says Semple. “To address climate change, the very attitude they have to the land is what we need to cultivate—there is much to learn from them. It is my belief that reconciliation will be finally happening when we’re actually having two-way conversations, where we are learning from each other.”

This article is part of our State of the Nation series covering Canadian architecture region by region.

The post State of the Nation: The North appeared first on Canadian Architect.

North Vancouver architect Kevin Vallely has a unique side profession: he is an internationally recognized explorer. He’s set a record for the fastest trek across Antarctica to the South Pole and was the first to ski the Iditarod sled dog race trail. He’s retraced a WWII death march through the jungles of Borneo and has biked the length of the frozen Yukon River.

Recently, Vallely was part of a team of four adventurers that attempted to traverse the Northwest Passage completely under human power in a row boat, in a single season. By doing so, the team hoped to demonstrate the profound effect that climate change is having on the world: ice loss has begun to open up the historically impassable seaway. In 2007, the passage was ice-free for the first time in recorded history.

The team braved frigid waters that could bring on hypothermia within minutes of exposure, winds that blew their boat backwards, and close encounters with ice that came close to crushing their vessel. The conditions were dreadful, and they ran out of time before finishing the traverse, with the ocean starting to freeze over at the end of August.

The evidence of climate change surrounded them—particularly the overall decline in sea ice. “Just a century and a half ago, Sir John Franklin’s ships the Erebus and the Terror—350 and 370 ton warships with hulls as thick as battering rams—were crushed and sunk in the sea ice,” says Vallely, who documented his journey in the book Rowing the Northwest Passage: Adventure, Fear, and Awe in a Rising Sea. “We headed out on the Passage in a 25-foot rowboat with a 1” plywood-and-fiberglass hull, without sail or motor.”

For local Inuit, the effects of climate change have long been evident. The winter ice is setting in later each year. Thinning ice has made subsistence hunting far more dangerous. In Tuktoyaktuk, longer summers are leading to melting permafrost and the rapid erosion of the coastline: several homes have been moved to prevent them from sliding into the sea. Vallely’s team sighted a grizzly bear on Victoria Island—a species that is only recently starting to extend its habitat to the High Arctic because of the warming climate.

The new Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS), reviewed by Trevor Boddy in this issue, centres on scientific research, but also acts as a community science hub to welcome locals with their intimate knowledge of the landscape. Vallely’s work as an architect also addresses environmental concerns: he’s a trained Passive House designer, and hopes to someday help design a healing centre for the community of Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, where in February 2018, 12 young people tried to commit suicide. Social, cultural and environmental issues are deeply intertwined in the North.

The overall warming of the globe, sea level rise, and instable weather patterns are all related to the changes that are being seen in the Arctic. “The Arctic is the proverbial canary in the coal mine for our planet,” writes Vallely. ”The biggest concern up north is lack of ice, which means a warming ocean. Sea ice from space appears as a white surface and reflects most of the solar radiation back out of the atmosphere, but as ice melts, we’re left with an ocean surface instead. It’s a catch-22 situation… less ice means more ocean to be warmed by the sun, which means less ice. Soon we will have no ice in the summers up there. We don’t even know what this will mean for the planet, but all indications are that it will be worse than the most dire predictions.”

Vallely notes that the cold temperatures seen on the Eastern seaboard in late April, are also linked to changes in the Arctic. “A warmer Arctic means a less strong jet stream. Instead of acting like a belt around the Arctic holding in all the cold air, it now meanders like a sine wave, allowing the cold air to slip south. As Eastern Canada is experiencing colder winters, the north is experiencing unprecedented warmth.”

In April, Environment and Climate Change Canada reported that, overall, Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, with a 3.3 C average temperature increase in the winter. This means more rain and less snow, which could have a significant impact on the availability of fresh water; the warming temperatures will also allow for new pests and diseases. New ways of building must be found in coastal regions that contend with the certainty of future sea-level rise, but also in cities that face extreme temperatures, flooding and an imperative to reduce their carbon emissions.

An Inuit saying goes, “Once the snow melts, you’ll see the dogshit.” As architects, we have a responsibility to create buildings that will weather the coming storms—literally and figuratively. We must moreover be leaders in changing the culture of building—adapting to the extreme weather conditions that are becoming the new normal, and finding new ways of constructing that will help mitigate the unfolding climate crisis.

The post Editorial: On Thinning Ice appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS), Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut

ARCHITECTS EVOQ + NFOE in joint venture

Two signal constructions of the 1970s in Iqaluit (then called Frobisher Bay) have cast long arctic shadows over the architecture of Nunavut. The Ron Thom-designed St. Jude’s Anglican Cathedral (1972) has been a much-loved building for local residents and visitors alike—so much so that it was rebuilt in a variation on the original design after a 2005 fire.  The church takes the form of an igloo, with radial glulam beams exposed inside, rising to a single skylight at the apex. The Thom design updates a traditional Inuit building form, abstracting it somewhat without losing its emotional resonance, comparable to how Arthur Erickson employed Haida house forms in his UBC Museum of Anthropology a few years later.

The contrasting tendency in Nunavut architecture is a more futurist one, embodied by the Gordon Robertson Education Centre (1971), designed by PGL Architects, led by Guy Gérin-Lajoie. The school uses pre-fabricated fiberglass panels—each one cast and insulated in a southern factory, then shipped and installed at off-vertical angles around a windmill-shaped plan. This panel-flanked school posits a new repertoire of high-tech forms for the north, complete with novel building plan geometries, the extensive prefabrication of building components, and even a questioning of the function and locations of windows.

There are echoes of both these Nunavut traditions in the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) in Cambridge Bay, designed by EVOQ in joint venture with laboratory consultants NFOE, both of Montreal. With over 8,000 square metres constructed in a multi-building campus at a cost of $120 million, CHARS is the largest educational and research building in Canada’s Arctic. Announced in 2012 as one of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Northern Strategy Priorities, the building has an unconventional and unprecedented science and technology program for the Arctic. It combines advanced biology and geology laboratories as well as social science facilities with a range of services catering to the local community. The intent is to actively foster a dialogue with the holistic knowledge of elders and hunters, and to make space for celebrations and gatherings. In the words of EVOQ project architect Alain Fournier, FRAIC: “CHARS is as much a community science centre as a research station.” These overlapping missions—scientific, social and cultural—have generated a complex and hybrid building with overtones both of Thom’s symbolic-romanticism and Gérin-Lajoie’s techno-structuralism. 

A High ‘IQ’ Design Process

Alain Fournier worked for PGL Architects a few years after the firm had finished a number of buildings in Iqaluit in the early 70s, including the Gordon Robertson school. In the early 80s, he went on to assist Guy Gérin-Lajoie with the design of the same community’s iconic yellow-coloured air terminal. Later, as a partner in EVOQ’s predecessor firm, FGMDA, Fournier designed another terminal in Kuujjuaq, inspired by the form of kayaks. Fournier also completed a range of cultural and educational buildings for the Inuit of Nunavik (northern Quebec). Few southern firms have this depth and range of knowledge of building in the North. EVOQ was deeply invested in community engagement for the planning, design, and especially the art program for CHARS. Local residents became constant advisors to the design team, prompting them to apply Nunavut’s Inuit Qaujimatjatuqangit principles—translated as “that which has long been known by the Inuit.” 

In their 2013 pre-design report, EVOQ states that they wished their building to “make an international statement” and “be an architectural representation of northern culture, Inuit Qujimajatuqangit (IQ) in particular.” Under the notion of IQ, CHARS resisted becoming a northern outpost for the imposition of hard physical and social sciences, but rather embraced the concept that the ideas and experiences of local residents should be incorporated into nearly every research mission, and just as importantly, into the architecture of CHARS. One cannot help but be impressed that the knowledge of wildlife and landscapes of Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay) hunters and elders was tapped through the entire period of planning and construction.

Exhaustive interviews and dialogues sought to understand how people once lived and continue to live in the arctic, and how the work of Inuit artists could be presented at novel scales and in a large variety of media. Now that researchers are starting to arrive to use CHARS, there will be an ongoing two-way interaction of southern and northern ways of thinking. This notion of Qaujimatjatuqangit might serve as a broader model to Canadians of how the academy—and architecture with it—should change.

Translating IQ into building forms invoked some other concepts. An important one was qalgiq, the communal igloo of multiple domes connected by passageways. At the bubble-diagram stage of space planning, these domes became overlapping circles of activity, especially in the community portion of the building. Unfortunately, a byproduct of this process is a set of public areas with compromised spatial clarity. In section, the conical, teepee-inspired room for dialogue and elders passes through the glulam-framed main roof that surrounds it almost incidentally. There is a similar tension in plan, with the circular base of the cone aligned on the central axis of the lab wing, then the outside walls pulled and twisted in ways that yield a string of leftover spaces, designated as multi-use and exhibition areas. The translation booths and sound studio outside this circle take up the geometry of the outside walls and flanking wings, instead of the main space they serve.

A Hybrid Result

Studying the main research building’s plans reveals layouts that are a laminate of two quite different architectures, each with their own spatial form and material expression. A spiral spatial deflection is seen to the southwest, with centrifugal undulations to the exterior walls, sine-wave desks and floor art, and an angling-out of the office wing from the big metal box of the laboratory wing. This undulating public and office zone wraps two sides of a contrastingly simple big metal box; the latter contains the laboratories, workshops and teaching spaces.

Each half of the CHARS building program has a different repertoire of finishes and space-definers, inside and out. Functions that might have been separate academic pavilions on a southern campus are amalgamated here into a hybrid: consolidated by the strong local forces of harsh climate, high construction costs and the day-by-day needs of users.

Echoes of Ron Thom’s sensibilities are most evident in the public rooms and administrative spaces that wrap the south and west sides of the main research building, with their views down to the Northwest Passage and towards the regional landmark of Mount Pelly. In this portion of CHARS, there are some very assertive references to the spatial qualities and construction techniques of igloos—but pointedly not their resulting spatial form. EVOQ focused on the notions of open, nested spaces and building in spirals, as snow houses are traditionally assembled from rising rings of packed snow blocks. Here, this is expressed through the use of copper-painted metal panels. In a 2018 presentation to the Ontario Association of Architects, Fournier described this detail as “copper-coloured, upward-spiralling, igloo-like steel cladding shingles—a nod to the Copper Inuit, the host community, and Inuit Nunangat (community).” The design team was particularly drawn to how metallic copper surfaces catch the rich light of the low-angle arctic sun, contrasting with the snow that surrounds them for nine months a year.

Similarly, there are references to pole tupiqs (skin-covered tents), qarmaq (a hybrid tent and sod house), and other summer or inter-seasonal structures created by the Inuit of the Arctic Islands. Fournier says that the ingenuity of these stick-built assemblies inspired the heavy glulam structure framing the station’s high-ceilinged public spaces. The key wood members are laminated small-dimension black spruce, manufactured in Quebec by Nordic Structures. Summarizing their approach in a pre-design report, EVOQ proposes that “CHARS will attempt to translate into built forms the Inuit way of doing things, not simply in the past, but as they have evolved over time. Architecture is an important platform for expressing identity. We will strive to develop a communicative iconography for CHARS.”

In contrast, the laboratory area is housed in a steel-frame rectangular building that borrows light and vistas from a flanking atrium. If the symbolism of the public areas results from CHARS’s self-consciously culturalist aims, there is no such agenda in the scientific heart of the building. The laboratories, classrooms, guest and staff researchers’ offices are all finely conceived, comfortable and flexible—surely the most handsome and thoroughly-outfitted scientific installations in the Arctic. Nunavut has the vocationally oriented and multi-location Arctic College, but no research-oriented post-secondary institution. While CHARS will host about 60 permanent researchers, research-managers and support staff, most of those who use its facilities will be visiting biologists, geologists, botanists, archeologists, and other specialists from around the world—up to 100 of them in high summer—staying for periods ranging from a few days to many months. There is a need for classrooms for short courses, hot desks for researchers checking in from field work, and fully equipped dry and wet laboratories capable of allowing for the necropsy of a walrus or small whale.

Perhaps the most revealing drawing of CHARS is an axonometric, which clearly shows the rectangular lab functions as a large steel box, with a structural timber frame wrapped around its water-facing sides. The latter varies in span and transitions from a gridded frame to a radial arrangement, centred on the large cone of the knowledge sharing centre, a top-lit room framed and ringed by massive glulams. While engaging conceptually, this laminate of steel-box scientific labs with copper-and-wood zones serving the cultural needs of the broader community is, in places, uneasy in execution. The copper-wrap façade is punctuated with boxed-out sections in red-painted metal, and crowned with a tupiq-like projection intended to provide a land-scale marker. But the igloo-inspired metal cladding veers close to pastiche, and the visual assertiveness of the projection is incongruous for what is already a very big building in a low-scale town of less than 2,000 residents. Inside the base of this projection is the large cone of the knowledge sharing centre. It is equally problematic for this reviewer—a top-lit room, framed and ringed by massive glulams, coming across as more of a set piece than a place to sit, less about dialogue than spectacle.

The Everyday and the Extraordinary 

There were no displays in the exhibition area when I visited, but one of the great successes of CHARS is its art program, in which new works from Nunavut artists, commissioned through an Inuit Nunangat-wide art competition coordinated by Isabelle Laurier, are permanently integrated throughout the building. EVOQ worked with local artists to scale up their work: a soapstone carving of a polar bear by Cape Dorset’s Koomuatuk Curley is digitally replicated at larger size to guard the public entrance airlock. In other cases, artwork is realized in contemporary materials: a voluptuous parade of multi-coloured sea creatures based on drawings by the late Tim Pitsiulak is set into the atrium’s flooring.

There are also more conventional prints and paintings, and one of the most delightful pieces is a quilt by Cambridge Bay elders, where, along with scenes of hunting and travelling on the tundra, there is a needlework representation of the CHARS building itself. This said, the artworks are traditionalist in themes and media—one hopes that younger and edgier artists could be given a future platform here.  Musician, novelist and visual artist Tanya Tagaq was born and raised in Cambridge Bay, and one of her early paintings is permanently installed in the local high school. While invited to propose an artwork, Tagaq did not submit. I hope another opportunity emerges before too long, as an interactive sound installation using her astonishing range of throat-singing vocalizations could help provide emotional glue to bring together CHARS’s public spaces.

EVOQ is also responsible for the other CHARS campus buildings, namely two triplexes and the Field and Maintenance Building. This service building houses storage, “dirty” labs, mechanical services, and repair facilities for snowmobiles, four-wheelers and other equipment for researchers. This reduces noise and vibration to the main labs, not to mention saving money by building more simply. As a straightforward, metal-panel-clad box, the service building is much more similar to standard arctic construction than either the rational high-tech of CHARS’s laboratory wing, or the sculpted and warmly-finished public areas. In the spectrum of design intentions, ranging from the symbolic-romanticism of Ron Thom to the techno-structuralism of Guy Gérin-Lajoie, the services building represents a third, almost default option—those serviceable structures concocted by engineers or steel building suppliers. High design—as seen in CHARS’s complex double ambitions—is necessarily rare in the high arctic, where most buildings are obliged to be functional sheds.

Springing from architecture’s evolution in the Canadian arctic since the 1970s, he CHARS building was created through a thorough research and consultation process, one that looks to the needs of both a tight-knit local community and widespread international researchers. But despite their intentions to bring these users together, the architecture as built and detailed enforces a sense that these two worlds that still sit apart. The ambitions, craft and social mission of CHARS are admirable and impressive. Still, Canada’s high arctic remains daunting in the challenges it presents, for residents, scientists and architects alike.

Vancouver architecture critic and curator Trevor Boddy FRAIC saw three books off press in the past eighteen months: City-Builder: The Architecture of James K M Cheng from Images Press, Melbourne; and from Vancouver’s Figure 1 Press, Stantec: Airports and Glacier Skywalk (with Clea and Jeremy Sturgess).

CLIENT Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) | ARCHITECT TEAM EVOQ—Alain Fournier (FIRAC), Carolyne Fontaine, Neil McNulty, Roxanne Gauthier, Isabelle Laurier, Laurie Damme-Gonneville, Felix-Antoine Thibault. NFOE—Alan Orton (FIRAC), Geneviève Marsan, Deirdan Ellis, Frederick Ian Chu, Karine Duguay, Kate Sokolenko, Jessica Cuevas, David Estall | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL SNC Lavalin | INTERIORS EVOQ + NFOE | CONTRACTOR EllisDon| LABORATORIES AND SURVEYING EXP | TRANSLATION SERVICE Uqsiq Communications | COMMUNITY LIAISON Panaq Design | AUDIO-VISUAL GO Multimédia | COST Hanscomb | CODE GLT+ | ELEVATOR Les Consultants Exim Inc. | KITCHEN Bernard et associés | MICRO-CLIMATE STUDIES RWDI | LIGHTING CS Design | AREA Main Research Building (MRB)—4,855m²; Field & Maintenance Building (FMB)—1,645 m²; two triplexes—1,025 m² | BUDGET $120 M | COMPLETION In phases between August 2015 and November 2018

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) Reduction by 55% compared to a reference building

WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) Reduction by 50% or more compared to a reference building

The post High Arctic, High Design: Canadian High Arctic Research Station, Ikaluktutiak, Nunavut appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Illusuak Cultural Centre, Nain, Labrador

ARCHITECTS Saunders Architecture with Stantec (local architect)

PHOTOS Bent René Synnevåg

TEXT Todd Saunders

AS TOLD TO Susan Nerberg

The Illusuak Cultural Centre, designed by Todd Saunders of Saunders Architecture with Stantec, recently opened as a gathering place for the Labrador Inuit, the southernmost Inuit population in Canada. A stand-out structure with undulating walls, the centre would be as novel in a large, design-forward city as it is in the small community of Nain. Here, it serves as the nexus of a cultural revival, showcasing Labrador Inuit ingenuity and traditions nearly lost as a result of colonialism.

Illusuak was commissioned by the government of Nunatsiavut—the Labrador Inuit self-governing region formed after a successful land claims agreement in 2005—to celebrate Inuit culture. In the process, the region also got a beacon that places it on the architectural map.

Saunders tells Canadian Architect about building trust with a people which has survived centuries of deception from settlers; the challenges of designing in a remote location for a culture with no permanent architectural precedent of its own; and why Illusuak is different from any other project the Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect has worked on so far.

Winning the trust of the client—and the commission

During the procurement process, the Nunatsiavut Government interviewed maybe five to ten architecture firms in person. I couldn’t be there, so I had to be interviewed over the phone. It was like a blind date, and I was in a disadvantaged position: they could only hear my voice, I couldn’t present anything or use video. But we had a really good conversation.

I suggested that what was needed in the village of Nain wasn’t just a museum and a cultural centre. What they needed—as in so many small communities in Newfoundland and Labrador—was a living room for the town. People meet privately in one another’s homes as smaller groups, so, I suggested, why don’t we create a living room for the community? The government representatives liked that idea.

They knew I was from Newfoundland. My great-great-grandfather had lived in Labrador, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Nain, the northernmost town, on a river with my great-great-grandmother. He was British, she was Mi’kmaq, and he spoke English, Mi’kmaq and Inuktitut. I explained that I was fascinated with that region and had read about it.

Then it clicked. The president of the government [at the time]—it turned out he knew my great-great-grandfather. At the end of the half-hour call, he and I ended up on the phone for another half hour talking about that. They understood my interest was genuine when I told them I wanted to continue to work in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Learning about Labrador Inuit culture and finding design inspiration in Nunatsiavut

When the Nunatsiavut land claim went through, the Labrador Inuit donated a chunk of land in the Torngat Mountains, north of Nain, for the creation of a national park. Since then, Parks Canada runs a camp every summer where visitors get to meet with and learn from local Inuit guides and research scientists from different parts of the world.

After winning the commission, I spent three weeks in Nunatsiavut, including a week at that camp. I went out on a boat seal hunting and fishing. I went to Rose Island, where Inuit have buried their loved ones for the past thousand years. I collected fire wood and cooked with Inuit guides. I also went hiking with fish researchers and got an outsiders’ view from them. Then I spent time in Nain to get a sense for the village. It’s very small and it might have been hard for an architect from Toronto to be there, but for me, being used to small towns, it was very comfortable. There, I got to know a few people from the Nunatsiavut Government and from Parks Canada quite well, and they were close to the team as we were working on the design.

Designing without precedent

We created the brief with the client, so there was a lot of back-and-forth to massage the design. This is what we usually do—except with a government project, we’d normally be handed a recipe that has to be followed. But here, thanks to this government being small, we could develop the brief together.

Still, at first we created a room program that was too big. Once we got it down to size, we asked for time to put it all together, developing 25 to 30 ideas. The main challenge was that the Inuit never had a built architecture. There was no precedent, nothing to relate our ideas to. When I work in Newfoundland, there’s 400 years of housing to draw from; in Nunatsiavut, they didn’t have any permanent structures.

I looked at the buildings of the Moravian missionaries, but that didn’t feel right. Plus, my great-great-grandfather took issue with the Moravians and the Hudson Bay Company, so drawing on that would feel like cheating on my ancestry. Then I went to Rose Island. There, I saw these organically shaped structures sunken two or three feet into the ground. When a Parks Canada staff sent me an archeological report on them, I realized this was actually something the Inuit had built.

The outline of these sod houses was quite free-flowing. This rounder, softer form was one I had never worked with before, but when I started working with it, it felt right—the shapes were soft and inclusive.

In the end, we decided to present three ideas, including the soft one. Before the presentation, I invited the community to take a look at them. They all went straight to the softer one, so it’s as if it was decided even before the presentation. It was obvious that was the right design for them.

Reflecting on the outcome

We’ve created a building that wraps around people. The entrance area peels away, and most of the windows open toward the ocean. There’s no pattern to the placement of the windows other than following the ceiling, which changes in height the whole way around. We wanted the idea of a fireplace in the centre, so when people come in, they gather at the café. Beyond that are the collections on view for the public, a movie theatre, and offices for the Nunatsiavut government and Parks Canada.

We designed the building to blend in with the coastal landscape: the cladding is Kebony spruce, which will turn grey like the rocks with time. We added boulders that will eventually be covered with moss, and built a deck around the structure. We had to lift the land on-site because the 100-year sea level comes up quite high, so the building sits on pillars that are concealed by filling in with rock.

I’m very pleased with the shape and the moves—no one has really done this before in Canadian architecture. We tried to stay away from patterns, which are very European. In Nunatsiavut, there isn’t that rigidity, so we used soft forms throughout.

And that’s the main difference with this project: we’ve never worked with these free-flowing shapes, because in a European or Canadian context, the precedents were more rigid. Here, there was no precedent, so we went on an exploration to find out what the architecture could be.

Have we succeeded? I don’t know. But we’ve definitely done something that no one else has done up there, and we feel confident Illusuak has its own identity and its own character. The Labrador Inuit are distinct people. Our architecture is distinct, and hopefully it represents them.

Susan Nerberg is a writer and editor based in Montreal.

CLIENT Nunatsiavut Government | ARCHITECT TEAM Saunders—Todd Saunders, Attila Béres, Ken Beheim Schwarzbach, Rubén Sáez López, Joshua Kievenaar, Chris Woodford. Stantec—Kerry Gosse, Charles Henley, Lez Snow. | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL DMG Consulting (Reg Hedges, Bill Baird) | HVAC CBCL Limited (Paul Sceviour) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL CBCL Limited (Paul Sceviour, Mike Dormody) | BUILDER Bird Construction Ltd. | EXHIBITS Blue Rhino Design | EXHIBIT FABRICATOR Ontario Science Centre AREA 1,200 m² | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION Fall 2018

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Despite living in extremely remote communities, Nunavik’s Inuit do not hesitate travelling long distances by plane to visit each other or to attend an important cultural event. Since fall 2017, the 10,000 people living in one of Nunavik’s 14 communities can now gather in a new Cultural Centre located in the Northern Village of Kuujjuaraapik, north of the 55th parallel. Designed by Blouin Orzes architectes, the building was originally planned as a showcase for the popular Inuit Games, and the facility now lends itself to all sorts of events, from storytelling, singing and dancing to concerts, films, banquets and other types of gatherings.

The 680-square-metre building is located near the mouth of the Great Whale River on a sand dune of exceptional beauty, a unique feature of Kuujjuaraapik. The slightly lopsided one-and-a-half-storey exterior volume seems to have been shaped by the strong winter winds. A light aerial structure signals the entrance portico, facing south, echoing the porch of the nearby church, the village’s oldest structure.

The protected portico can be reached through a gently sloping concrete ramp, which creates an additional gathering and play area for the community. The strong lines of the front façade are projected inside the building and give life to the well-lit entrance lobby. Given the building’s function and because of high heating costs, the lobby is the only area of the building with large openings.

It opens directly to the main hall, which can accommodate up to 300 people. Thanks to retractable seating and its state-of-the-art scenic equipment, the hall lends itself to various types of events. Translation and videoconferencing facilities also allow the community to hold assemblies. A small platform floating above serves as the hall’s control booth.

Pre-painted wood planks were used for the exterior cladding along with steel panels. The warm colour of the planks was meant to recall the sand dune on which the village is built, an uncommon situation as most northern communities sit on permafrost.

Long-term planning is needed to achieve any project in the North. For the architects, it means consulting with the community and accompanying the client during a process that can last for years. Project financing represents yet another major challenge, since construction costs in Northern regions are often triple what they are in Canada’s urban areas. Finally, because materials and building components can only be shipped during a brief summer season, accurate scheduling is of crucial importance.

Typically, shipments leave Montreal in June to reach villages such as the Northern Village of Kuujjuaraapik roughly a month later. Ships go up the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then travel along the western coast of Newfoundland, circle Labrador, follow the Bay of Ungava, the coast of Nunavik, reach Hudson Bay, and head south, delivering goods to the villages along the way.

The building was awarded a Grand Prix du Design’s special Mention, in February 2018.

Photos courtesy of Blouin Orzes architectes.

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The Canadian mining industry is changing. In years past, mining in the north involved open-pit, placer or below-ground operations, often dangerous and physically demanding work. Increasingly catering to junior mining companies engaged in exploration, the resource economy now puts more emphasis on classroom training for operating and maintaining complex machinery.

By 2014, the federal government had provided Yukon College with funding to create a centre that could offer local education, training and research in Yukon. The selected six-acre site is located at the north-east corner of the Yukon College campus, near the Yukon College Arts Centre, on a plateau with expansive views to the Yukon River Valley. The design team had to work around the presence of a major high voltage line to the north and Yukon College’s ring roads to the west. The site, 77 metres above the downtown area, is mostly flat and needed little intervention, an important asset given the weight of vehicles such as giant graders, which have to be maneuvered on firm, stable ground.

Like many industrial and education buildings in Canada’s oft-neglected remote northern locales, the CNIM could well have been constructed as a bulky shed in the landscape. Instead, Kobayashi + Zedda Architects designed it as an elegant and thoughtful hybrid comprising a compact training centre and what they called the “Shop”—a huge, flexible space where workers are instructed in the use and maintenance of heavy equipment as well as trained in various skills such as carpentry and welding. The Shop also houses a number of CNC machines and welding terminals.

Leading the design team was KZA partner Jack Kobayashi. “To meet the tight budget, we specified an inexpensive, pre-engineered steel frame building for the main shop,” says Kobayashi. “However, rather than simply adhering a facade to hide the featureless shed, we decided to layer it with a foreground building that would simultaneously contrast with—and complement—the mass and volume of the larger structure.”

The large, rectangular Shop volume is clad with embossed metal panels that are white in order to keep the polyurethane foam insulation sandwiched between the panels from absorbing too much solar heat during Yukon’s extended summer daylight hours. It was feared the increase in temperature would potentially damage the adhesive and result in the delamination of the insulation from the metal sheeting over time. The choice of white also helps limit the overwhelming visual impact of this oversized structure.

The smaller volume, for education and training, is sheathed in dark fibre-cement panels. Its entry facade is punctuated with wood slats and a yellow corrugated metal panel, directing one’s eye to the southeastern edge of the building where the three classrooms are located. The architects planned the structure and floor layout of the Shop in such a way that it could be divided into two spaces if future needs require it. A large bifold door was specified to allow access for high-clearance mining vehicles. The Shop was also designed for the carpentry program workers and trainees to be able to construct in a controlled environment the modular buildings needed for mine sites before shipping them whole.

The building contains three classrooms, an office area, and a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) area, which acts as a transitional zone between the Shop and the training area. While the shop wing adheres to the campus grid, the classroom wing is rotated slightly, oriented to capture views and break up the visual impact of the larger mass.

The PPE zone linking the two wings acts as a fire separation area between the shop and classrooms. The saturated red environment serves as a forceful visual reminder to students leaving their classroom that they must don protective gear before entering the Shop. Both subliminally and overtly, the use of such strong color signals the fact that one is entering a safety zone.

In this northern city, where temperatures in winter average -24oC and daylight is reduced to 6.5 hours, a building needs to take as much advantage as possible from weather and natural light conditions. The CNIM is connected to the Yukon Campus district heating system, but a large solar wall installed on the western facade helps preheat incoming air through the ventilation system. The Centre features large amounts of day lighting and passive solar heating through large glazed window walls and a skylight.

As with most industrial buildings, the College’s design directive was simple: the creation of as much floor space as the limited budget would allow. By keeping fire separation zones confined, working with the site’s natural topography, using economic materials in imaginative ways, and taking care to use local labour, the design team was able to provide the College with a full 80% more floor area then they were expecting — an amazing accomplishment on the part of the architects. What’s more, they have achieved a building of quiet elegance, to serve the community for decades to come.

***

Odile Hénault is a Montreal-based architectural critic and consultant.

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Writing on the Arctic is no small feat, and 
assembling the wealth of information present in the latest book by the principals of Toronto’s Lateral Office is a remarkable undertaking. The appearance of Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory is also timely, arriving at a moment when Arctic communities are 
facing many challenges and opportunities. This deftly crafted book should be mandatory reading for students in architecture and architects interested in developing a practice above the Canadian tree line.

The book advances research developed for the 2014 exhibition Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 at the Venice Biennale in Architecture, and is divided into five sections: Urbanism, Architecture, Mobility, Monitoring and Resources. The first sections focus on the building and settlement types that have resulted from the traditional nomadic and semi-nomadic lives of Indigenous peoples. The later chapters detail actions taken in response to geopolitics, survival and the exploitation of resources. Each section includes a timeline and essay, along with interviews with scholars, architects, resource managers and members of Inuit communities, as well as case studies abundantly supported with maps, graphics, tables and photos. These graphic components enable the Southern reader to visualize the vastness and harshness of the polar context, and familiarize themselves with technical solutions devised 
by architects and engineers who have wrestled with the specifics of this region.

Sheppard and White align themselves with sympathizers who are shedding light, without judgement, on the diversity of Arctic practices—whether those of the Qallunaat (White people) or the Indigenous populations. They do not shy away from controversial aspects 
of history or current affairs, but often elect 
to address these issues through the voices 
of interviewees. Embedded in the essays and interviews, the reader will discover, sadly, how fraught with trauma the Arctic can be.

Writing on the Arctic with Southern notions can be hampering. For instance, the concept of public space that is generally understood 
in relation to dense urban environments does not quite reflect the social structures of hamlets, where private and public realms are sometimes intertwined. Still, the concept has relevance, and the authors and interviewees provide examples of indoor public spaces that, out of necessity, serve many functions. The broader concept of the “public sphere” 
is astutely reinterpreted. Combining insights from Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and anthropologist Claudio Aporta, Sheppard and White argue that the “trail,” as a connector of communities, is to be considered “the public sphere of the Arctic.” This conclusion is supported by descriptions of mobility patterns that are deeply connected to the 
land and to seasonal cycles, and which have profoundly shaped the identity of the Inuit to this day. Beyond its theoretical content, 
the case studies in the fascinating chapter 
on mobility introduce the reader to multiple modes for transporting goods—from skidoo trails, ice roads and roads on permafrost to sea and airlift processes.

The well-documented section on architecture is chronologically organized from pre-contact to today, allowing the reader to appreciate the ingenuity of traditional dwellings and the current challenges of building. Through interviews with some of the veterans of Arctic architecture, the reader catches a glimpse 
of the tensions between governmental agencies, clients and architects, and the progress that has been made in the last two decades because of better-structured consultation processes. This is indirectly shown through a close reading of the case studies, which mostly look at education buildings from the 1970s to 2012. Essays and interviews in the sections on monitoring and resources reveal much about the challenges at stake in today’s Arctic lands, 
including the questions of sovereignty and the impact of climate change.

The book is not without its limitations. For instance, the “many norths” here covered are mostly to be found in the Western and Central Arctic, with a few incursions in Nunavik and almost none in Nunatsiavut. Curiously, there 
is one major missing element in the visuals: 
a map of the four regions of Inuit Nunangat using the terminology officially adopted by its Indigenous peoples—Inuvialuit, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut. The authors’ attempt at defining the term “vernacular” is also somewhat muddy. Between qualifiers such as polar, nascent, suppressed, northern, emerging and modern, the reader is left with a rather confusing picture of what vernacular design might look like in this remote region.

Nonetheless, Many Norths is an important and informative addition to the small body 
of literature on the built environment of the Arctic. It draws our attention not only to the critical issues of the past and present, but also to the huge potential that the region holds.

Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory, by Lola Sheppard and Mason White. Actar, 2017.

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A former teacher, Harriet Burdett-Moulton, 68, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, was inducted last year as a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. In a career spanning 40 years, the senior architect with Stantec Architecture was the first to practice her discipline in Nunavut, with more than 150 buildings in her portfolio.

How has your Métis ancestry shaped your personal and professional goals?

Growing up in [Cartwright] Labrador, I had a sense that we were considered second-class citizens and that people who were very capable and intelligent had very little input into their governance. I feel strongly that people who use a facility or a building should have a say in how it is designed for them.

You emphasize the importance of honouring “aboriginal form” in Indigenous projects. What’s a good example?

Aboriginal form that reflects heritage or expresses culture will mean different things to different cultural groups. A reflection of Inuit heritage or culture, for example, is the use of an undulating roof on Piqqusilirivvik (the Inuit Culture Learning Facility in Clyde River) that lets the wind blow over the roof to minimize snow drifting.

You recommend that architects under-stand communities and their relationship to the land and the environment. Why is this important in Indigenous design?

I think everyone involved in the design process for all projects should have a voice. I think it is especially important for Indigenous people because they have been ignored for so long. There is a rich heritage of design, patterns, and knowledge of way-finding that can be utilized to make projects unique and potentially great.

Ancienne enseignante, Harriet Burdett-Moulton, 68 ans, de Dartmouth, en Nouvelle-Écosse, a été intronisée l’année dernière comme fellow de l’Institut royal d’architecture du Canada. Dans sa carriè-re d’une quarantaine d’années, cette architecte senior chez Stantec Architec-ture a été la première à exercer sa discipline au Nunavut. Elle compte plus de 150 bâtiments dans son portfolio.

Comment votre ascendance métisse a-t-elle défini vos objectifs personnels et professionnels?

J’ai grandi à Cartwright, au Labrador et je sentais que nous étions considérés comme des citoyens de deuxième ordre et que des personnes très douées et intelligentes participaient très peu à leur gouvernance. Je crois fermement que les gens qui utilisent une installation ou un bâtiment devraient avoir leur mot à dire sur leur conception.

Vous insistez sur l’importance d’honorer la «forme autochtone» dans les projets autochtones. Pouvez-vous nous en donner un bon exemple?

La forme autochtone qui reflète le patrimoine ou qui exprime la culture a un sens différent pour les différents groupes culturels. À titre d’exemple, la toiture ondulante du Piqqusilirivvik (le centre d’apprentissage de la culture inuite à Clyde River) qui laisse le vent souffler au-dessus pour atténuer l’accumulation de neige est un bon exemple d’un élément architectural qui représente le patrimoine ou la culture du peuple inuit.

Vous recommandez aux architectes de comprendre les communautés et leur relation avec la terre et l’environnement. Pourquoi est-ce important dans la conception autochtone?

Je crois que toutes les personnes qui participent à un processus de conception devraient avoir leur mot à dire, quel que soit le projet. Je crois aussi que c’est particulièrement important pour les peuples autochtones, parce qu’ils ont été ignorés si longtemps. Il y a un riche patrimoine de design, de motifs et de savoir-faire. Utilisons-le pour créer des bâtiments uniques et même de grands bâtiments.

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