(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
The past decade has witnessed an incredible ambition by Canadian post-secondary institutions to Indigenize their curriculum by drawing connections between curriculum and Indigenous perspectives, traditions, and culture. While the extent of this varies depending upon the discipline, there are often challenges in providing such opportunities within science and engineering faculties in many universities across Canada. From a dearth of Indigenous instructors available across the country’s vast expanse to more pervasive attitudinal biases towards traditional Western canon, there are many reasons behind a lack of Indigeneity within contemporary STEM-based disciplines, including architecture. In response to this challenge, a multidisciplinary team drawn from a diverse range of disciplines including architecture, video game design, and archaeology in order to generate content that presented the commonalities between Indigenous architectural design traditions and contemporary architectural practice. Through an interactive digital simulation of an Indigenous settlement with high fidelity assets generated from distinguished archaeological researchers and esteemed video game design faculty, architecture students were able to understand the relevance of Indigenous architecture in their own design work. Examining the parallels between structure, heat transfer, air flow, moisture control, and programming, this initiative highlights the possibilities of multidisciplinary work towards Indigenizing architectural pedagogy.
Vincent has been awarded teaching distinctions from different architecture programs in Canada, most notably for his initiatives on increasing technological accessibility in design praxis. At Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science, he teaches a variety of courses, ranging from design studio to structures. He has developed and oversees the Architectural Science Co-op program and created the Department’s digital design and fabrication curriculum. He also serves as the director of the [R]ed[U]x Lab, one of Canada’s most prolific student design-build organizations with work that has been exhibited around the world.