Florian Jungen The Mi’kmaq wigwam
t he birch bark wigwam is a building type used by the Mi’kmaq people on the Atlantic coast of Canada. The frame of the domed wigwam is built with a series of two inch diameter birch saplings driven into the ground framing a circle about 14 feet wide. The ends of the saplings may be charred to protect them from moisture in the ground. Two opposing saplings are bent down and lashed together in the center with spruce root or with branches left on the ends of the trees. To avoid snapping the poles, they are anchored in the ground and slowly massaged over a person’s back to take the required bend. Thus the structure is immediately given human proportions. The rest of the saplings are bent over to form a series of perpendicular arches and a few horizontal poles strengthen the dome-shaped framework.
The framework is covered with large sheets of birch bark, reed mats or hides which are hung from the frame overlapping like shingles, so that they shed water. A few diagonal poles are laid over the structure to hold down the skin. In the winter, the wigwam might be insulated with sphagnum moss filling the cavity between an exterior layer of bark and an interior layer of decorated cattail mats. The wigwam was an ideal house type for a nomadic lifestyle. The valuable birch bark sheets could easily be rolled up and taken on seasonal migrations in pursuit of the most abundant resources. The frame was left stand- ing, as material for a new one could be found almost anywhere. If well built, the frame might even be reused on the next visit to a camp the following year. By constantly moving their settlements, the Mi’kmaq ensured that the ecosystem would not be over-stressed, even though they might visit the same site over generations.
The wigwam uses the minimum of readily avail- able resources, can be built in a few hours with a limited set of skills and is responsive to both climatic demands and the availability of materials. This technology has also proven to be adaptable today. With the availability of industrial mass produced materials, a tarpaulin from Canadian Tire might provide the most practical cladding material for the structure. The skin of the wigwam represents the inter- face between human culture and the natural environment, not only separating the weather outside from a sheltered space inside, but join- ing together the natural properties of a raw sapling with the arch of the human back to give architectural form.
Florian Jungen has just completed his M.Arch thesis at Dalhousie University in Halifax and is headed on to Montreal for a research residency at the Cana- dian Centre for Architecture to study a large archive of drawings by John Hejduk and his interpretation of vernac- ular New England construction details.
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