Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Phoebe Crisman
How can architectural pedagogy engage climate change and other global challenges as we teach our students to design specific, sustainable buildings and places where all species can thrive? How can we ethically collaborate across diverse disciplines, cultures, and geographies? This paper explores my experiences at the University of Virginia developing an Indigenous Ecologies pedagogy, which combines place-based learning with participatory action research, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and collaborative design methods. Students in my transdisciplinary seminars and studios collaboratively designed a Dakota Cultural Center with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate on their Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota, and The Black Power Station with a Xhosa artist/activist collective in Makhanda, South Africa. University students developed cultural competency, environmental literacy, and new ways of co-producing knowledge, including participatory cultural mapping, storytelling, and practices of decolonization. Combining TEK with normative architectural knowledge and methods can produce richer epistemologies, informed choices about building materials, and holistic strategies for climate change adaptation. This paper compares pedagogical strategies and contributes to socio-ecological systems research in architecture. These teaching experiments through an Indigenous Ecologies lens sought to change the way students learn to make the world, through empathy, imagination, and activism.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2023.15
Volume Editors
Massimo Santanicchia
ISBN
978-1-944214-44-9
