Notice Board

Architecture & Design NOW presents Braylon Gorham
Contemporary Architectural Practices in the Canadian North
6 pm | March 18, 2019
Room L1060
Free admission, everyone welcome!

The Canadian North has one of the fastest growing populations in Canada with limited access to resources. Historically, interests of southern Canada in the Arctic have been determined by resource extraction, military operations and national sovereignty, succeeded in recent times by environmental concerns, related to global warming. These factors, among others, make it a unique region to design and build, with a challenging set of circumstances to overcome. This talk presents some of these conditions and issues, as well as some current solutions. It extends ideas presented by Mason White and David Fortin in their earlier presentations in Architecture & Design NOW.

Focusing on design ideas and architectural practices that are currently being implemented in northern Canada – Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut – the presentation will encompass a range of building types, with a focus on residential design, cultural centres and  educational institutions, as well as planning.  Contemporary projects will be discussed in terms of cultural appropriateness, and cultural and environmental sustainability, bringing forward ideas of ‘critical regionalism.’ To situate this conversation, traditional Inuit and First Nations building practices will be surveyed, and a brief history of non-Indigenous building practices in the north offered, introducing some of the unintended consequences of policies and building and planning practices from the south.

Braylon Gorham is a fourth year undergraduate at the University of Lethbridge, completing a Bachelor of Science degree. His future goals include working in the field of ecological recovery, especially related to urbanization. This presentation is part of an Independent Study with Victoria Baster on ‘Contemporary Architectural Practices in the Canadian North.’ Fascinated by outside-the-box thinking and solutions, Braylon finds particular interest in northern architecture because of the many obstacles and issues which must be considered when building in the north.