“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

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 Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, as well as Indigenous stakeholders. Anchored by its sculptural cladding in oak and wood veneer and bookended by stately limestone walls, the interior evokes the heritage of Anishinaabek teaching lodges and the longhouses of Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat communities.

To foster a more communal, participatory counterpoint to corporate boardrooms, the long oval table at the heart of the space draws inspiration from the practice of Indigenous sharing circles. That sense of communality and comfort translates seamlessly across cultures. For visitors and employees, the aim was to create “a safe place, and a place where people feel embraced,” says Brook McIlroy principal and Indigenous Design Studio leader Ryan Gorrie.

For Gorrie, who is a member of Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek (Sand Point First Nation on Lake Nipigon), the project was also an opportunity to encourage Indigenous artisans, fabricators, suppliers and distributors to participate in every step of the process. The eye-catching drum stools, for instance, feature fabric by Indigo Arrows, a Winnipeg studio led by Anishinaabe interior designer Destiny Seymour; the rich limestone that bookends the room was sourced from Manitoulin Island’s Odawa Stone quarry, which is managed by Sheshegwaning First Nation.

High above downtown Toronto, these stone walls forge a connection to the cultural and geological histories of Turtle Island. “Stone has the longest memory,” Gorrie explains, “and many cultures refer to stones as grandmothers and grandfathers, because they are the oldest beings we know.”

WAMPUM LEARNING LODGE, LONDON, ONTARIO

As the saying goes, the greenest building is the one that is already built. The newly inaugurated Wampum Learning Lodge at Western University in London, Ontario, is a prime example. Toronto and London firm Architects Tillmann Ruth Robinson (ATRR) and Phoenix-based Tawaw Architecture Collective have transformed the Faculty of Education’s former library into an Indigenous learning centre. The retrofitted building now houses classrooms, gathering spaces, offices and a media centre that support and celebrate Indigenous ways of knowing. Selected by a council of elders, its name, Wampum, means “white string of shell beads,” the kind that have long been used to record history, create treaties and tell stories.

Following engagement with administrators, students, parents and faculty (which explored everything from student needs to aesthetic preferences and ceremonial protocols), the architects set out to reimagine the space. The existing structure’s circular form resonated with Tawaw for its symbolism in Indigenous culture. “It represents the circle of life, continuity, lack of hierarchy, egalitarianism,” explains Wanda Dalla Costa, Tawaw’s principal and Canada’s first female Indigenous architect.

Connection to nature was also a driver; the architects punched windows into the previously dark 1970s building to honour the solstice and equinox. A newly terraced landscape boasts a medicine garden on the lower level (species were selected in consultation with local knowledge-keepers), complete with a thoughtfully designed arbour and sacred firepit.

Inside, Tawaw sought to create a home away from home for Indigenous students — a place that felt like “auntie’s cabin.” The students wanted a hub to socialize, cook and eat together on campus. A storytelling circle and kitchen now serve as key gathering spaces. In the basement, a cavernous meditation room with a water feature and soft furnishings offers respite from student life (given historic under-representation in universities, campus buildings can be uncomfortable for first-generation Indigenous students).

In each design element, Tawaw sought to uplift ancestral worldviews. “In the Indigenous way of looking at the world, we look back in order to look forward. That multi-generational perspective is critical,” explains Dalla Costa. Though circular design is often regarded as a singularly environmental concern, is there anything more circular than that?