This course will investigate contemporary decolonial placemaking in Winnipeg, Treaty One. Decolonial public space is often defined as reimagined spaces and places that seek to diversify or counter the settler colonial gaze. In addition, I like to think of decolonial placemaking as an opportunity to rewrite or re-map the landscape through interdisciplinary design initiatives and storytelling. During the course I will ask: how can we, as an interdisciplinary group of students, work together to unsettle the future of our spaces and places? How does the interdisciplinary nature of public design work to benefit a place? What would you like to see incorporated into a public space in our city?
Topics and themes covered in this course relate to specific sites concerning reconciliation, Indigenous resurgence, Queerness, Black Lives Matter activism, BIPOC initiatives, and spaces created for the differently abled. As a class we will explore the following sites: The Forks, The Rapid Transit Line (blue line), This Place (Air Canada Park), Assiniboine Park, and certain locations in North Point Douglas. Students will embark on a number of field trips and hear from a variety of volunteer guest speakers who have worked to decolonize public space and placemaking in their field. These will include, but are not limited to planners, architects, landscape architects, designers, artists, profit and non-for-profit collaborators and funders (such as the Winnipeg Arts Council, The Winnipeg Foundation, and the Forks.) Each of these participants have worked to counter whiteness, heteropatriarchy, and settler colonialism (to name a few).
This course will provide students an opportunity to engage and analyze site-specific locations in our city, hear from active collaborators, and participate in weekly reading seminar discussions regarding the most up-to-date publications and design initiatives. In the second half of the course students will apply the knowledge gained from their readings, seminar discussions, guest lectures and field trips to create their own decolonial site design. Each student or group of students will be assigned a particular site and their work will be exhibited in a curated summer show for the Architecture 2 gallery.