New Architecture on Indigenous Lands - Softcover

Malnar, Joy Monice; Vodvarka, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081667745X ISBN 13: 9780816677450

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2013

Synopsis

Black Elk speaks of the “square boxes” his people were forced into, and Winona LaDuke of the “boxes of mints” on Native lands. As long as the government was deciding what tribal buildings should look like, Native custom and culture were bound to be boxed in—or boxed out. But in the post-1996 era of more flexible housing policies, Native peoples have assumed a key role in the design of buildings on tribal lands. The result is an architecture that finally accords with the traditions and ideas of the people who inhabit it.

A virtual tour of recent Native building projects in Canada and the western and midwestern United States, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands conducts readers through cultural centers and schools, clinics and housing, and even a sugar camp, all while showing how tribal identity is manifested in various distinctive ways. Focusing on such sites as the Tribal Council Chambers of the Pojoaque Pueblo; the Zuni Eagle Sanctuary in New Mexico; the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, British Columbia; and the T’lisalagi’lakw Elementary School, Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka offer wide-ranging insights into the sensory, symbolic, cultural, and environmental contexts of this new architecture.

With close attention to details of design, questions of tradition, and cultural issues, and through interviews with designers and their Native clients, the authors provide an in-depth introduction to the new Native architecture in its many guises—and a rare chance to appreciate its aesthetic power.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

New Architecture on Indigenous Lands is a ground-breaking study of a largely unrecognized new genre in contemporary North American architecture. The authors have taken on a subject that until now has not been critically studied or celebrated in the architectural press, except in very limited terms. Perhaps most importantly, the book recognizes not only the extraordinary new works of architecture just beginning to transform reservation communities, but also the importance of making that transformation.
--   Daniel J. Glenn, AIA, NCARB,
Principal of 7 Directions Architects/Planners
 
Tribal reservations are perhaps the last bastions of what one could call the 'contemporary frontier.' It must now be acknowledged that a critical mass of native practitioners have been paving the way for design that is informed by community consensus and which contains the mnemonic aspects of their cultural identity. This book is 20 years overdue.
-- Ted Jojola, University of New Mexico

About the Author:

Joy Monice Malnar, AIA, is associate professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 081667745X
• ISBN 13: 9780816677450
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272