The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture

This chapter examines Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander domestic architecture across the period from the onset of European colonisation to the early twenty-first century. In these two centuries, housing and living conditions reflected and shaped the often abrupt and disruptive change to the culture, health and livelihoods of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The post-contact history of Indigenous housingIndigenous housingAustralia has been determined by government policies, informed by politics and settler attitudes to Indigenous Australians. Until the 1970s, state and territory governments, with specific legislation, exercised control over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives including place of residence and access to housing. For an extended period of this history, housing choice was oppressively limited. Despite entrenched disadvantage, it is a story of cultural persistence and adaptation to an imposed architecture that expected sedentary living patterns rather than the more mobile Indigenous lifestyles. Towards the end of the twentieth century, a combination of research and architectural practice had identified approaches to Indigenous housing that could improve living conditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The design of specific buildings to house Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderTorres Strait Islander cultural artefactsArtefacts, artworks, activities or organisations, has become important in Australian architecture since the 1960s. A growing number of buildings—and new architectural typesArchitectural types—have been devised to support, display and safeguard Indigenous cultures and to accommodate Indigenous organisations that have become more prevalent since self-determinationSelf-determination. These new public, institutionalInstitutional buildings and community buildingCommunity buildings typologies provide an architecture that often speaks to the both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population. This chapter examines a number of different types of Indigenous institutional, public and community buildings, surveying architectural precedents within the genres of keeping houses and cultural centres, museums, art centres, educational and health projects. Some of Australia’s leading architects, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have contributed to these works, seeking to create architecture that better fits the needs of Indigenous users, to participate in the recognition of the unjust treatment of Indigenous Australians, and to dignify contemporary Indigenous cultures through architectural excellence. Public, institutional and community buildings that cater to and purport to represent or make visible Indigenous communities have developed their own typologies during the twentieth century and continue to do so. The need for Indigenous input for buildings to function according to needs and expectations, and to reconcile decades of exclusion and racism still poses challenges for policy makers and architects alike. Evidence-based design that demonstrates improved health and wellbeing and educational outcomes in culturally appropriate buildings is occurring, but integration between research and design is needed, along with greater post-occupancy evaluation, and a commitment to learn from designs and their effect on Indigenous peoples and communities. Architecture and placemaking that celebrates cultural identity, fits with Indigenous socio-spatial and cultural needs, and is devised by or with Indigenous peoples, is an important aspect of making Indigenous cultures visible and demonstrating Indigenous resistance and resilience in contemporary Australia.

On 25 May 1978, after 507 days of resistance through occupation, 222 protesters were removed from Takaparawhau (also known as Bastion Point) by 800 police officers, after which the kāinga (village), marae (forum)Marae (forum) and gardens they had established to assert Ngāti Whātua tribal rightsNgāti Whātua tribal rights to the site were destroyed (Taonui 2012).

This chapter recontextualises work written by the author on projects constructed between 1940 and 2000 (see Refiti in Pacific Art Niu Sila: The Pacific dimension of contemporary New Zealand art. Te Papa Press, Wellington, pp. 208–225, 2002). The essay titled PolynesianPolynesianarchitecture in Aotearoa New Zealand outlined the emergence of cross-cultural architectural types that were transported from the Pacific to Aotearoa New Zealand. During this period, the term ‘Indigenous architecture’ was rarely used in architectural histories.

Since the mid-l960s, the North American peoples indigenous to the USA and Canada have expressed their various cultural values in buildings designed for traditional practices and for introduced activities such as schools, hospitals, cultural centres and government functions. The people concerned are known as Native Americans or Indians in the USA and as First Nations peoples in Canada. This chapter addresses buildings of various types on reservations and in cities within the contiguous USA that express specific cultural values using modern architectural methods, materials and forms. They demonstrate that while Native American values have survived, they have also evolved and responded to societal forces.

Native American reservationsNative American reserves are currently considered quasi-independent political entities with varying degrees of autonomy within the U.S. federal system. Significant 1996 legislation resulted in increased Native control over what is built on their lands. Individual tribes can now hire architects and contractors, as well as employ new systems of financing and culture-sensitive building codes. We discuss, with examples, why cultural issues are critical to design in Native communities, and their built interpretation by both Native and non-Native architects. We also examine issues relating to urban planning, sustainability, and financial strategies in light of these enhanced opportunities.

Architecture as a discipline is proving powerful in its ability to express Indigenous culture. The act of creating built form unites dialogue from multiple disciplines including: the environment, economics, natural sciences, Indigenous Knowledge, place, geography, history, community engagement, placemaking, placekeeping, sovereignty and artistic expression. Can the typical design process, consisting of a modest amount of ethnographic research and a few community engagement sessions, grasp the complex relationships between the natural, historical and social realities within contemporary Indigenous culture? This chapter will review three projects—The Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre, the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre and Thunder Bay Spirit Garden—through a lens of Catalysts in Indigenous Architecture (place, kinship, transformation and sovereignty); Indigenous Architectural Outcomes (cultural, environmental, political, economic, and social); and metric systems such as the Te Aranga Māori Design Principles. Scholars cited include: Matunga, Doshi, Cajete, Jojola, Smith, Pallasmaa, Malnar, Vodvarka and Kovach.

This chapter examines contemporary trends in Indigenous placemaking in Canada, discussing cases from the cities of Ottawa, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. In these cities Indigenous cultures are being infused into the design and programming of public spaces, although shortcomings exist. Key concepts from the academic literature on place, placemaking, and urban design are discussed, setting up a point of departure for our analysis of Canadian cities. The chapter concludes by highlighting some important principles for Indigenous-inclusive placemaking in Canadian cities that would increase the visibility of Indigenous cultures in the built environment.

This chapter explores the inherent complexities involved with discussions about Métis culture and contemporary architecture in Canada. While various building typologies and material cultures have existed for many Indigenous groups for centuries, there has been limited consideration of how architecture might inspire contemporary design and planning with Métis communities moving forward.

In this chapter, we introduce the concept of ‘placemakingPlace-making’ to the Canadian Arctic context, a term frequently used in urban planning and architectural settings to describe and characterise how spaces are formed by organic and systematic activities, particularly in contemporary times.

This chapter offers a personal discourse on the nature of indigenous architecture framed as a response to architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Rewi Thompson. It investigates the notion of a ‘different approach’ to architecture grounded in indigeneity, an indigenous ontology, epistemology and ‘being indigenous’. I investigate this ‘different approach’ through a prism that is my interpretation of Maori architectural history—extrapolating from the local to the national then international context to give my take on the concept of indigenous architecture. I use the Maori concept of whakapapa to signify that indigenous architecture—as a people/placed based human endeavour with its own tradition and genealogy has always existed, and continues to produce a coherent corpus of architecture. I do this by positing the notion of indigenous architecture as both design process and outcome, sourced in unique indigenous narratives and archetypes for design. I also posit the idea of an indigenous architectural chronology and typology that challenges some of the universalising assumptions of ‘western’ architecture and spatial design.

This chapter is based on conversations between architect Andrew Lane and interior designer Francoise Lane, the founding directors of Indij DesignIndij Design. The firm is one of the few Indigenous-owned and operated architecture Practices in Australia, based in CairnsCairns in the far north of the state of QueenslandQueensland, Australia.

This chapter proposes that architectural projects, for, with and by Indigenous people, could have more leverage if the goals of cultural sustainabilityCultural sustainability were adopted, thereby mobilising greater participation and agency more effectively. The sustainability agenda advances resource accountability to moderate economicEconomics growth providing socio-economicSocio-economics benefits for future generations. This concern was first raised about the overdeveloped Western world; however, drawing on the writings of Indigenous and other scholars, we found that socio-economicSocio-economicssustainabilitySustainability concepts derived from Western paradigms are not easily adapted to all circumstances and development practices, because Indigenous Australians have not benefited to anything like the same degree as their non-Indigenous counterparts, somewhat undermining cultural sustainabilityCultural sustainability.

Tangentyere DesignTangentyere Design is an Aboriginal owned architectural practice based in central Australia. As an enterprise of its parent organisation, Tangentyere Council, its mission is to promote—within the built environment—the social and cultural aspirations of Indigenous peoples. This article highlights the challenges faced by a not-for-profit entity working in a commercially competitive environment, and examines the concepts of cultural agency and social enterprise through its building projects and advocacy efforts.

This chapter traces the varied uses of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander building traditions across different periods of colonisation to the early twenty-first century. In Australia, two-way exchanges of European and Indigenous building technology began on the colonial frontier and continued in remote parts of the country into the twentieth century. Despite the eventual dominance of colonial and modern architecture, Indigenous building traditions have persisted in certain places across an uneven history of European contact. Largely dismissed by the colonists, the continued use and adaptation of building traditions, as well as projects that reconstruct lapsed building practice, demonstrate a richer and more diverse history of Indigenous building skills and knowledge. Since the 1970s, increasing references to the Indigenous culture, art and history in Australian architecture contrast with the relatively few buildings that have referenced Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander building traditions. The wider recognition of the varied Indigenous dwelling types and materials suggests a potential for greater reuse and inventive adaptation of these traditions in contemporary architecture.

Since the 1970s, a number of Australian architects have been considering how non-Indigenous designers can work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to achieve better built environments. A consistent message from this work has been the importance of employing inclusive, respectful, cross-cultural processesCross-cultural processes that engage the client and end-users, understand the history of the people and place, and share knowledge and expertise in the process.

This chapter explores the critical importance of ethical Indigenous knowledge engagement in the knowing of living heritage landscapes and their associated built environment education, and professional practices across Australia.

If it is true that public buildingsPublic buildings “…reflect the beliefs, priorities and aspirations of a people” (Powell 1995: ix), what do Australia’s public buildings say about Australians? More specifically, what does the design of Australia’s courthousesCourthouses say about the beliefs, priorities, aspirations and agency of Australian people and in particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?

This chapter examines the importance of place, within a contemporary urban IndigenousIndigenous community, where in-depth ethnographic research was conducted between 2006 and 2009. Place is used as a concept to explore and examine Indigenous people’s connections to the physical environment and how these have developed through personal, family, social, and cultural means to become contemporary traditions within an Australian suburbanSuburban setting that of Inala in the Queensland’sQueensland capital city Brisbane. The research argues that for Indigenous architecture to be meaningful, Indigenous people’s understandings and connections to place must be better understood and valued by the broader Australian community. The Inala case study is used to demonstrate how then place constructs of meaning, attachment, identity and sovereignty are enacted in everyday settings that will have relevance across cultural groups.

Charged with the tasks of giving unique and diverse cultural visibility to, creating political awareness about and economically empowering First Peoples communitiesFirst Peoples, models for First Peoples cultural centresCultural centres have morphed across numerous programmes in recent decades. Their transformation coincides with international attention to First Peoples rightsFirst Peoples rights and the creation of national First Peoples networks. Architecture is used to emplace these changing needs. This chapter examines how debates on TreatyTreaty in Victoria inform the nascent vision of a cultural, social and political institution for First Peoples communities and discusses the consultative processes and programmatic aspirations surrounding the facility. Central to this discussion are a priori rightsA priori rights and the host–guest relationshipHost-guest relationship.

This chapter explores the particularities of placemakingPlacemaking in the south-eastern Australian capital city, MelbourneMelbourne. The WurundjeriWurundjeripeoplesWurundjeri people have occupied the place for 40,000–60,000 years. Since colonisationColonisation by the EnglishEnglish in 1834 Wurundjeri’s placemaking practices have been shaped by the histories of colonisation, and ongoing political, economicEconomics and legal contingencies, as much as they have by precolonialPre-colonialtraditionsPre-colonial traditions. Wurundjeri, like most Indigenous peoples around the world, suffer economic and political marginalisation and consequently have limited capacity to use architecture as a means of staking out territory or expressing contemporary social identity. Instead they have used varied contemporary Indigenous placemaking approaches to reclaim place in the city, some that have emerged from traditional Indigenous practices, and others that have developed through encounters with (and in reaction to) colonising forces.

John Scott is an important New Zealand architect of the post-war period and was also one of the country’s first architects of Māori heritage. His work is well known and widely admired. It includes houses, schools, churches—notably Futuna Chapel—institutional buildings such as visitor centres and one of the country’s first urban marae (Māori building complexes, traditionally tribal and communal). Because of his Māori heritage, many commentators have read Māori references into his buildings, but Scott himself always emphasised his dual heritage and referred to both Māori whare (houses/buildings) and Pākehā woolsheds as important building types in New Zealand’s architectural history. They become precedents for his own work. This chapter explores Scott’s life and work, and locates the work within the contexts of race relations, cultural development, New Zealand’s concern with national identity and its burgeoning regional modernism. It presents a body of work that is rich in ideas, references, spatial quality, materials, textures, geometry and luminosity.

This chapter highlights the integral role that Indigenous Sāmoan architecture plays within Sāmoan culture and the dynamics and implications of change. From high dome shaped thatch roofs to lower sloped, straight corrugated iron roofs, from open sides to partial or total walls, from round ends to square ends, the author examines the material, economic, and sociocultural factors of how and why these changes through a half century of globalization in the Sāmoan Islands. Sāmoans interpretations and ethnographic observations of the impacts these changes, as well as structural and phenomenological forms of analysis inform the exegesis, which overall aim to strengthen the view of how architecture both reflects and shapes sociocultural processes.

Originating half a century ago in Europe, the critique authenticity and identity were quickly taken up in the USA, and subsequently in countries like New Zealand. Towards the end of the twentieth century, someone using the word ‘authentic’ in New Zealand was immediately under suspicion of essentialism. Māori who did not want to relinquish notions of authenticity and identity often became targets of such criticism. The notion of identity is, of course, further complicated in diasporic situations, where its articulation at the intersection of dwelling and travelling claims continuity within discontinuity. This paper explores notions of identity and authenticity as performance, in the force field of past and present imperialisms and globalisation, through the histories of several ‘travelling houses’ from Samoa and Aotearoa New Zealand. For more than a century, Pacific houses have been displayed in fairs, parks or museums: three Māori wharenui (meeting houses) and a Sāmoan fale tele (council house) were instrumental in performing European and Pasifika identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Three fale and Te Aroha o Te Iwi Māori, the central and largest whare at the Māori village, were built at the Polynesian Cultural Center (Hawai’i) in 1961–63. In 2004, a fale arrived at the Tropical Islands Resort in Brand, Germany, which had been built on commission by tufuga fau fale and was reassembled at the resort. These houses not only signify but per/form identities, according to inconsistent, even conflicting values. Our paper investigates exchanges between three regions, worlds apart yet with shared histories. We first explore notions of place and identity at exhibitions featuring Māori whare and fale Samoa in the USA, Europe and Aotearoa New Zealand. Then, we address aspects of critical regionalism relevant to (post)colonial contexts and, finally, we discuss exhibitions as performative practices. We deliberately see-saw between diverse geographical, theoretical and political positions, to generate relational spaces that transcend geo-political boundaries, yet remain local and specific.

The classical Tongan fale (The Tongan term fale describes a building for human habitation.) constructed in the capsular plan with elliptical roof form popular during the nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century has been described well (see Austin 1997; Vea 1985; Tuita 1988; Kaloni 1990, 1997; Potauaine 2006, 2010); however, there has been little research on the architectural developments of the faleFale in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries (‘Ilaiū 2007, 2009, 2011). This chapter discusses the emergence of fale puhaFale puha, fale ‘AmelikaFale ‘Amelika and fale tufitufiFale tufitufi (Fale puha, fale ‘AmelikaFale ‘Amelika and fale tufitufiFale tufitufiare terms coined by the author for description purposes.) as twenty-first-century Tongan house types.

Johnpaul JonesJones, Johnpaul is a co-director of Jones and Jones Architects + Landscape Architects + PlannersJones and Jones Architects + Landscape Architects + Planners located in SeattleSeattle, WashingtonWashington (state). Jones, the son of a Welsh-American father and a mother of ChoctawChoctaw and CherokeeCherokee heritage. He spent his early years in the family’s tenant farmhouse on the outskirts of the town of OkmulgeeOkmulgee, the capital of the Creek NationCreek Nation (located in rural OklahomaOklahoma). “In those days Indians couldn’t live in town, and neither could blacks.”

North American tribes had culturally and regionally specific sustainable forms of architecture, which utilized local materials reflecting spiritual and practical needs. In contemporary times, the diverse and aesthetically pleasing forms of architecture were replaced by the ubiquitous ‘HUD home’, a simple low-gabled 3 bedroom box that continues to be the main model for housing on most Native American reservations. This chapter discusses the author’s experiences of four decades of working directly with tribes across the US to develop housing, community buildings and plans which reflect and celebrate tribal diversity. The author seeks to reclaim Indigenous cultural legacies and translate them into tribally-specific, culturally and environmentally-responsive architecture. The chapter will discuss five of the author’s projects in detail; the Nageezi House (New Mexico), the Little Big Horn College master plan and buildings on the Crow Reservation, the Payne Family Native American Center (Montana), the Place of Hidden Waters (Washington), and the Skokomish Community Center (Washington).

We discuss the distinct cultural and philosophical context for the new architecture that has emerged on Native lands within the USA during the past two decades. As individual tribes can now employ their own architects and contractors, a more sophisticated design sensibility has emerged that seeks to reconcile form and content in a manner that is culturally reassuring and unifying. Four projects—each distinct in its design approach, building function, and geographic area—are presented in terms of cultural reflection, structural approach, sustainability, and their impact on the development of a wider Native regionalism.

Challenges in contemporary Sámi architecture are often met by using highly visual figures and symbols that represent a conception of Sámi culture. This chapter focuses on a subtler symbolic aspect, namely the materials used to construct and clad the buildings. Although the materials chosen follow Nordic and international architectural trends, the wood, stone, concrete and glass are ascribed a set of meanings to fit the Sámi context. The question is to what degree these materials mediate conventional and even stereotypical understandings of Sáminess or produce awareness of new Sámi architecture and identity.

In understanding the new authentic indigenous architecture, this chapter analyses cultural appropriateness using a concept originally derived from ecological psychology in the USA. The ‘behaviour setting’ concept analyses how certain attributes such as spatial behaviour, physical boundaries, ecological structures, environmental meanings, management controls and time properties combine to form categories of complex architectural places to fulfil recurring human needs. Four case studies from indigenous groups in America, Polynesia and Australia (health clinic, meeting place, homeless centre, training camp) show how distinctive indigenous behaviour settings are being reinvented from traditional practices and combined with global architectural attributes, service and management practices to generate a new indigenous architecture, one which is contributing to a quality of lifestyle for the users.

The mass incarcerationIncarceration of Indigenous peoples is a worldwide phenomenon. Disproportionately, high numbers of Indigenous people are confined in prisons.Prison The growing number of Indigenous people in prison systems and their treatment is deeply distressing as, simply put, the experience of prison causes immeasurable suffering and damage to individuals, families and communities. This chapter discusses the design of prisons for Indigenous prisoners in the USA and Canada. It argues that designing congruent environments for Indigenous peoples may not be enough while criminal justice agencies continue to operate under punitive agendas. It recommends that human rights instruments should be translated into prison design and Indigenous people and communities be given cultural agency in prison design and planning processes, as well as their management and operation.

The recent architectureArchitecture of Indigenous-focused early learningEarly learning centres across Australia, Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand appears to share design goals. These centres strive to produce an inclusive design that considers the diversity of languages, cultures, age and other points of human difference. The early learning centres attempt to create a place that meets the needs and desires of Indigenous families and their children. The architecture goes beyond the mere housing of specific services to promoting better health and education through the design of shared learning and play spaces. Three comparative case studies examine the parallels and differences in the design process in these three distinct countries.

Museums have become important locations for shaping and reshaping contemporary relations between post-colonial nations and indigenous cultures. The anthropologist James Clifford has used the term ‘contact zone’ to describe the indeterminacy and possibility that exists when the formal, anthropological knowledge held by curators and the embodied, evolving culture represented by indigenous groups encounter each other within the orbit of the contemporary museum. Clifford’s use of the term ‘contact zone’ is borrowed from the work of Mary Louise Pratt who used it rather in an historical sense to describe the strangeness and unanticipated outcomes for epistemology of encounters on the frontiers of European imperial expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This chapter will examine the architecture of four museums which in their institutional missions have foregrounded relations between contemporary nation–states and the communities descended from colonised people. These museums are the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Noumea (completed 1998); Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand, Wellington (1997); National Museum of Australia, Canberra (2001); and the Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2006). Each museum is based on a different idealisation or conception of the contemporary emerging from the colonial histories which it represents: rapprochement between coloniser and colonised at Tjibaou; the post-colonial nation as ‘bicultural’ at Te Papa; the post-colonial nation as multicultural ‘mosaic’ at the NMA; rapprochement between a former coloniser and the formerly colonised at quai Branly. In each museum, architecture was charged with the responsibility to make these idealisations physically and experientially manifest even as architecture itself struggles with its own inheritances of elite, monocultural knowledge. For both Clifford and Pratt, the term ‘zone’ primarily entails a spatial metaphor; the contact zone is an epistemological space. The term ‘zone’, however, can also be taken to refer literally to the physical spaces of an institution or the geographical spaces where colonial encounters with the other took place. Indeed, both Clifford and Pratt often discuss or allude to just such ostensible places in their work. The chapter will bring their discussions of the ‘contact zone’ to bear in critique and analysis of its four key examples to consider what architecture could be in such a place, how it too could become a more labile and less determinate thing.