On Tuesday, July 14th, 2020, students chalked a call to action on the sidewalks surrounding the University of Waterloo School of Architecture (UWSA) in Galt. We, the Collective Resistance—an intersection between The Sustainability Collective and Treaty Lands, Global Stories—are calling on the university to “Break the Canon”. In response to the Western worldview reinforced in our curriculum, we call on UWSA to confront the canon through which we are taught to think as architects. We...
Treaty Lands, Global Stories stands with the Black Lives Matter movement and shares the pain of the Black community as they grieve the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. We also acknowledge the ongoing colonial violence enacted on Indigenous peoples and their communities. We stand with Indigenous communities as they grieve the recent murders of Chantel Moore (of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in British Columbia) and Rodney Levi (of Metepenagiag...
In conjunction with Waterloo Architecture’s 50th Anniversary lecture series and exhibition, several student initiatives are hosting a lunchtime conversation series at the Design at Riverside gallery. (more…)
A group of White People are barbecuing. Music plays on their stereos as they pass burgers around picnic tables. Men drink beer, children play cricket. When the ball rolls down to the nearby lake, a young White Boy chases to catch it. That is when he spots a small power-boat of uniformed Black People approaching the shore. He runs to his parents in fright. The Black People land on the beach, walk steadily by in...
Treaty Lands, Global Stories has always operated on the premise that storytelling is a powerful tool through which we can learn. Stories transport us and show us unreachable perspectives. They confront us with realities we have never considered before. Our bias towards storytelling is frankly obvious: the word story is our name, after all! (more…)
To change the way we build, we must first change the way we learn to build. Check out the full text of our research paper on designing an inclusive curriculum, initially presented at the SSAC Layered Histories conference in May 2017.
Treaty Lands, Global Stories will be representing Waterloo Architecture with an installation at the OAA MOVE Party on September 15th, and you’re invited! “What Binds Us” is a reminder that we need to make space for stories that are missing.
North America has a Substituted History: we live on a continent where one set of histories and heritage was forcibly substituted for another. The main narrative that drives our culture-making is an import from somewhere else.
Since cultural literacy is one of the key values of this school, we should be leaders, not followers, in the diversity and inclusiveness of our curriculum. Here, Paniz Moayeri speaks about the struggle with her identity as a Muslim Persian, and the importance of seeing one’s cultural history reflected in architectural education.
