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Changing Culture: Architecture at the Intersection
By Carol Phillips, Partner, Moriyama & Teshima Architects
The architect has agency in this time of interlinked crises. It is arguable that the environmental crisis is perhaps at the root of many the intensely problematic social, social justice and health issues that continuously divide us. While each of these requires a complexity of specific solutions and there is no simple explanation as to why we find ourselves here, what a number of these issues appear to have in common is an attitude that is evident in exploitative behaviour. Humans have exploited the planet and each other and the damage will require both quantitative and qualitative solutions, Architecture exists at this intersection.
The architect has agency, and it is perhaps behaviour that we have the most agency to impact. Through design we have a potential to change culture for those who encounter and build our buildings by creating experiences where we can see ourselves as part of nature rather than separate from it and more like each other than different. Through our work we aspire to incrementally change how we see and treat each other and the environment, and in doing so change the culture of how we live and build together.
This talk will focus on two projects we are currently working on that have this potential. These are The Mukwa Waakaa’igan Indigenous Centre for Cultural Excellence, a reconciliation project for Algoma University and the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and Limberlost Place for George Brown College, a 10-storey mass timber, net-zero carbon emissions academic building in Toronto.