Project Niitsitapi
International Design Competition, 2015: Featured by Instagram
The project is based in, and takes great inspiration from the structures and place making of the original inhabitants of Calgary, and aims to create a modern day, temporary, nomadic architecture for Calgary.
The Niitsitapi were the one of the indigenous people of the Canada, living a nomadic lifestyle - constructing small dwellings out of local materials they could find and manipulate.
They built temporary shelters out of timber and animal skins, and like many native people of ‘the new world’, they arrayed their dwellings and structures around a fire. This created a centre, a place for the people to congregate, a place to meet others, a place to eat, a place to tell stories. This simple idea of creating a moment, in which people can interact, at the centre of a civilisation is completely different to the commercially driven modern day way of place making.
The idea was to create a structural system that has the potential to temporarily inhabit the areas in and around the existing urban fabric of Calgary, to promote interaction and public life in the city. The project identifies the three typologies of ‘Lost Space’ in Calgary, and applies this idea to one of them, a gap site between two commercial buildings, as an experimental testbed for a change in attitude to how we may be able to re-use space in the city. The project re-imagines the waste site, taking influence from the public nature of the Niitsitapi, to create a temporary theatre / cinema space, in which people are invited to watch performances with friends, or with strangers. The theatre is constructed structurally out of timber members, and is lined with a patterned canvas, to construct a series of rooms across the city, and to give each space a sense of theatrical atmosphere, directly influenced by the Niitsitapi’s structures and lifestyle.
