rejecting an architecture of fear nunavut
commentary | building practice by robert billard
the north environment design culture expedience
Fear of the Environment Fear of weather created a knee-jerk architecture that stuffed a yawning hole we had created in the first place. The hulks of Inuksuk and Nakasuk schools are a testament to this: fibreglas mounds with bullet-hole windows designed to keep out the environment at the expense of sunlight, fresh air and consequently students’ health. Houses were made small and culturally useless with materials that are alien to the landscape. Despite this, it was perceived by southern populations and those that knew nothing different in the north, that developers and distant governments were doing the best thing – providing a humanitarian service: housing and schooling. In the absence of anything else and the publicity nightmare of northern homelessness and English illiteracy, any solution southern architects and contractors could offer was accepted. Fear of the cost of building in the north fostered a use of substandard materials and an inappropriate use of others, and a complete abandonment of the idea of actually making buildings look and feel good. While the south had long abandoned the frontier mentality, the Arctic was built seemingly in just that way. Things have begun to change, in part due to the development of better building materials, and, to a lesser degree, the fact that Nunavummiut began to ask for more. Local people began to travel south and saw what they were missing in the way of architecture and sustainable, healthy communities and people from the south began to move north expecting to have what they had before. Thus was born the second phase of the architecture of fear: the fear of simply being here.
planning departments and elected officials of small Canadian communities constantly struggle with what form growth should take: is it the preservation of history or the need to foster a vision consistent with the needs of today’s society? Is it a struggle to find any sort of coherent vision out of a history of seemingly haphazard development? This last one is Nunavut. From decades of federal government initiatives to maintain sovereignty in the north, communities were built on the sites of seasonal hunting or fishing destinations. Within a general commitment to all Canadians, the government invested in infrastructure for these new settlements. To say that the same care was taken with northern communities as with those in the south would be a gross error. These new settlements were approached in the same manner as setting up a military or mining camp — in many cases those that worked on the architecture and planning were those that supplied services for the military or industry. Expediency and cost, overriding factors that shaped the architecture of the north, continue to direct built form, fostering a vision that could be described as an architecture of fear – that plagues community governments and inhabitants. City councils should not be the ones to set guidelines for form and function, although councils have a role in speaking out on people’s behalf. Responsibility lies with the architect, developer, contractor, owner and general public, whether local or visiting, to understand the land and culture they are about to impact. There is no excuse for subsistence architecture where expediency and cost are the only mitigating factors. Striving only to meet these criteria is bound to fail on a far more meaningful level. Submitting to fear, whichever form it takes, stunts the positive growth of a community. While design should pay attention to cost and the entrenched views of local populations, these fears should not steer architecture.
onsite 19: street, streets and lanes, the straight and narrow, wide and busy
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