11: This older home is so tucked into the trees and rock as to be invisible from the road.
12: An older Yel- lowknife street where houses were fitted into the land- scape.
There has to be a North-specific approach. There are examples of newer housing merg- ing with the landscape, often using some blasting, some not, but neither obliterating the natural landscape lines in the process (photos 14, 15, 16 and 17). These might not include an attached two-car garage. And these may not necessarily include piped water and sewer. Lifestyle choices have aesthetic impacts (photo 18). There have been technical advances in infra- structure, and municipalities elsewhere have re-evaluated their development requirements. Options exist. In NWT, work is underway in Distributed Energy, and a growing number of communities are undertaking Community Energy Plans to explore their infrastructure options. Creating developments, which are more sensitive to the existing landscape, could be informal and voluntary, or mandated. Codes can be amended; and exemptions can be granted for bylaws. Municipalities need guid- ance from the present population to plan for the arriving population. Builders and devel- opers need to be made aware of options and what the population wants. As Land Claims progress, these groups still have time to make changes, to decide how their traditional lands will look in the future. Regarding blasting in particular, it is not nec- essarily cheaper than other site preparation approaches. It just happened to be the most expedient approach at hand, and not enough people cared to work to effect change.
13: A newer subdivision where sites were cleared, and sometimes blasted for development. Setbacks, street widths, sidewalk development and provi- sion of utilities follow NWT guidelines.
14: These houses use the steep rock
face as design features.
38
on |site 14
architecture and land
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