Designing & Prototyping

The work presented below emerged from the One House Many Nations house at EDITdx — a prototype unit that was developed through the One House Many Nations campaign by Idle No More in collaboration with the Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) Design Lab, (DDL), and the University of Minnesota.

Following the One House Many Nations prototype house at EDITdx, the project continued through a training program at OCN where another iteration of the house was developed to better incorporate the need to build as much of the house with the community as possible. This story is the product of that training program.

Over the winter of 2017-2018, Chris directed the building training program at OCN: working with eight OCN trainees and two OCN supervisors in a process of design thinking and material prototyping to develop a housing system that responds to climatic and cultural needs.

The outcome of our two months of design and carpentry training produced a house design and established a small-scale manufacturing plant to produce the components of the house.

Jenniey TallmanFebruary 19, 2018intentional design, planning, design in place, training, OCN, climatic and cultural needs, carpentry, DDL, OHMN, micro-CLT, EDITdx, housing, SII, Nigel Noriega, Jacob Mans, relationship