Kaamil Allah Baksh

Advisor: Lancelot Coar

Image 1 – Chladni plate – Device used to visualize sounds of the land
Image 1 – Chladni plate – Device used to visualize sounds of the land
Image 2 – Indigenous ways of living vs colonial constructs.
Image 2 – Indigenous ways of living vs colonial constructs.
Image 3 – Final plans of The Third Space
Image 3 – Final plans of The Third Space
Image 4 – Journeying on the Treaty 1 territory lands
Image 4 – Journeying on the Treaty 1 territory lands
Image 5 – Revealing inconsistencies of current C.A.S.T building to host land-based pedagogy.
Image 5 – Revealing inconsistencies of current C.A.S.T building to host land-based pedagogy.
Image 6 – Journeying and listening to the Treaty 1 territory lands to capture the Land’s sounds.
Image 6 – Journeying and listening to the Treaty 1 territory lands to capture the Land’s sounds.
Image 7 – Proposed seasonal pedagogy that the Third space hosts.
Image 7 – Proposed seasonal pedagogy that the Third space hosts.

The Third Space

Having studied in multiple schools during my childhood, the learning environments, teaching methods and cultures played a great role in shaping my worldviews. These teaching methods that arose out of colonial constructs has been dominant in the schools and have always been greatly unchanged since India’s colonisation by the British, where the prescriptive method required each student to operate with precision, according to a pre-arranged plan.i   

Similarly, the impacts of industrialisation and colonization in Canada have perpetuated an imbalanced and irresponsible use of the land and suppression of local cultures that has spread into various aspects of the community leading to societies that function on suppression and oppression and eventually leading to environmental and social unsustainability. ii

This thesis project looks at exploring various pedagogies and epistemologies of Canadian Indigenous communities that can reframe ways in which architectural education systems could be radically reconsidered to incorporate the values of Indigenous knowledge into the practice of designing the built environment that has been long suppressed through the history of colonization.

Considering myself as a project in this thesis, I look to prioritize concepts that develop from my nature and from my intuitive response to the project with a spiritual connection to the Land, while avoiding a “solution-oriented” mindset to break away from the colonial constructs that I have grown up in. 

Having spent a year and a half, here at The School of Architecture, University of Manitoba, and living its realities, the thesis will test its research and findings in Indigenizing the School’s educational system and learning environments. 

Considering the Indigenous view that the Land is the first and original space for learning, and second learning space as the colonial model of learning in the classroom spaces at the university, The Third Space proposes to re-imagine new intermediary spaces of learning and making for the students of Faculty of architecture at The University of Manitoba, that are attuned to and out on the Treaty 1 territory (campus) Lands and Waters, which promotes learning through a seasonal pedagogy.

 

i Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Brantford, Ont.: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2012. 
ii Kathleen Absolon. 2011.Kaandossiwin: How we come to know. Winnipeg: Fernwood