DESIGNS
By: Maosen Xu and Étienne Genest
We do not belong to the indigenous community which means that our understanding of their traditional culture is limited, and we acknowledge the importance of integrating member of the indigenous community in the process. The fast pace of the studio does not allow us to establish a process as inclusive as we would have liked. Nevertheless, the case studies on The Spaces of Restorative and Transitional Justice website, the short exchange we had with Canadian indigenous architect and a series of scientific articles guided us throughout the completion of this project.
Our project doesn’t pretend to be a perfect answer but an honest opportunity for us, settler, to imagine how we can participate to the decolonization of our city. We tried to strike a proper balance between flexibility, as we wanted indigenous community to be able to manage the space as they wanted, and specificity, as we wanted to propose a project that was truly appropriate for the indigenous community.
McGill University is on land which has long served as a site of meetings and exchange amongst Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg nations. We acknowledge and thank the diverse Indigenous peoples whose presence marks this territory on which peoples of the world now gather.