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Framing Home: Culture, Place, and Design
Join us for Framing Home: Culture, Place, and Design, an evening with two incredible speakers discussing how domestic architecture and design impact the cultural experience of residents.
Living Systems, Living Stories: Housing for a Shared Future
with Wanda Dalla Costa
This talk reimagines the role of architecture in shaping cultural identity, community connection, and a shared urban future. Drawing on the Living Systems Framework—a holistic design approach that blends Indigenous and Western perspectives—Wanda Dalla Costa will explore how design can honour place, reflect diverse worldviews, and foster a sense of belonging for all. In conversation with Lougheed House’s layered history, this session invites participants to consider how the built environment can both reflect and evolve cultural narratives, bridging the past with the possibilities of our collective future.
Framed: Apsáalooke Architecture & Resistance
with Rebecca Wingo
In the early 1900s, the Office of Indian Affairs in the United States turned the basic human need for shelter into a weapon, believing that the shape of the house could reshape the behavior of the residents within. With the Native American Citizenship Act looming, the government ordered photographic surveys of individual households on reservations across the country, including Crow Country in Montana. The surveys served their purpose, but the Indian Agent’s camera unwittingly recorded far more than the Crows’ agricultural industry. Reading against the grain of their original intent, Wingo will explore how this stunning series of photographs reveals a distinct Apsáalooke architectural style and documents their everyday acts of resistance.
Thursday, September 11
Doors at 6:45 pm
Talk at 7:00 pm
FREE! Registration Required
Light refreshments will be provided
About Wanda Dalla Costa
Wanda Dalla Costa, FRAIC, AIA (she/her) is an architect, member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation, and an advocate for Indigenous peoples. A graduate of SCI-Arc and the University of Calgary, she balances practice and teaching: at Arizona State University she founded and directs the Indigenous Design Collective, while leading Tawaw Architects (www.tawarc.com), a firm licensed in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, California, and Arizona. Her practice uses participatory design to create culturally responsive solutions for Indigenous communities across North America, with a portfolio spanning cultural, educational, healthcare, residential, recreational, landscape, and urban projects that spark cross-cultural dialogue. Dalla Costa is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 honoree (2019), distinctions that recognize her leadership in shifting culture through design and activism.
About Rebecca Wingo
Rebecca S. Wingo is a settler scholar of the Indigenous and American West, and an Associate Professor and the Director of Public History at the University of Cincinnati. Broadly (and rather eclectically), she studies houses: homesteads in the West, houses replacing tipis on the Crow Reservation in Montana, and the displacement of Black citizens for highway construction. How society defines the house and home is a reflection of architectural determinism — the belief that the shape of the house can reshape the behavior of residents within, or that houses can be weaponized to destroy unwanted communities or cultures.
Join us for Framing Home: Culture, Place, and Design, an evening with two incredible speakers discussing how domestic architecture and design impact the cultural experience of residents.
Living Systems, Living Stories: Housing for a Shared Future
with Wanda Dalla Costa
This talk reimagines the role of architecture in shaping cultural identity, community connection, and a shared urban future. Drawing on the Living Systems Framework—a holistic design approach that blends Indigenous and Western perspectives—Wanda Dalla Costa will explore how design can honour place, reflect diverse worldviews, and foster a sense of belonging for all. In conversation with Lougheed House’s layered history, this session invites participants to consider how the built environment can both reflect and evolve cultural narratives, bridging the past with the possibilities of our collective future.
Framed: Apsáalooke Architecture & Resistance
with Rebecca Wingo
In the early 1900s, the Office of Indian Affairs in the United States turned the basic human need for shelter into a weapon, believing that the shape of the house could reshape the behavior of the residents within. With the Native American Citizenship Act looming, the government ordered photographic surveys of individual households on reservations across the country, including Crow Country in Montana. The surveys served their purpose, but the Indian Agent’s camera unwittingly recorded far more than the Crows’ agricultural industry. Reading against the grain of their original intent, Wingo will explore how this stunning series of photographs reveals a distinct Apsáalooke architectural style and documents their everyday acts of resistance.
Thursday, September 11
Doors at 6:45 pm
Talk at 7:00 pm
FREE! Registration Required
Light refreshments will be provided
About Wanda Dalla Costa
Wanda Dalla Costa, FRAIC, AIA (she/her) is an architect, member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation, and an advocate for Indigenous peoples. A graduate of SCI-Arc and the University of Calgary, she balances practice and teaching: at Arizona State University she founded and directs the Indigenous Design Collective, while leading Tawaw Architects (www.tawarc.com), a firm licensed in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, California, and Arizona. Her practice uses participatory design to create culturally responsive solutions for Indigenous communities across North America, with a portfolio spanning cultural, educational, healthcare, residential, recreational, landscape, and urban projects that spark cross-cultural dialogue. Dalla Costa is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 honoree (2019), distinctions that recognize her leadership in shifting culture through design and activism.
About Rebecca Wingo
Rebecca S. Wingo is a settler scholar of the Indigenous and American West, and an Associate Professor and the Director of Public History at the University of Cincinnati. Broadly (and rather eclectically), she studies houses: homesteads in the West, houses replacing tipis on the Crow Reservation in Montana, and the displacement of Black citizens for highway construction. How society defines the house and home is a reflection of architectural determinism — the belief that the shape of the house can reshape the behavior of residents within, or that houses can be weaponized to destroy unwanted communities or cultures.