Indigenous Approaches to Place

The Legacy Room in Toronto’s CIBC Square and the Wampum Learning Lodge in London, Ontario, show how indigenous practitioners are bringing Indigenous ways of knowing to spatial design.

Words: Stefan Novakovic, Sydney Shilling
Posted: Mar 2, 2023
SHARE: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Email

We rely on advertising revenue to support the creative content on our site. Please consider whitelisting our site in your settings, or pausing your adblocker while stopping by.

“Our job as architects is really about placekeeping,” Wanda Dalla Costa explains. “You really need to sit in and align yourself with that place to do this work.” Two projects, one by her firm and the other by Brook McIlroy, are bright beacons.

LEGACY ROOM, TORONTO

PHOTO: Riley Snelling

In a gleaming office tower high above the streets of downtown Toronto, there is a space whose memory spans thousands of years. Opening out to the city with a carved ceiling and a spirit of welcome, CIBC Square’s Legacy Room channels Indigenous heritage into Canada’s economic core.

Led by the Indigenous Design Studio — a speciality practice within Brook McIlroy — the design was developed in partnership with CIBC and the Gord...

Indigenous Approaches to Place

The Legacy Room in Toronto’s CIBC Square and the Wampum Learning Lodge in London, Ontario, show how indigenous practitioners are bringing Indigenous ways of knowing to spatial design.

Words: Stefan Novakovic, Sydney Shilling
Posted: Mar 2, 2023
SHARE: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Email