CanU Forum: Convergence 2023 - Forum Opening Session

We are thrilled to introduce Wanda Dalla Costa as the speaker for our Forum Opening Session on September 26th which would be OPEN TO ALL!

Evoking the Transition Imaginary through the Storied Landscape

For the last four decades, there has been an increasing interest by scientists and scholars in Indigenous knowledges. The Indigenous worldviews offer a new ecological ethic, which carries a heightened standard of care for all living things. The timing coincides with debates surrounding dominant models of practice, from urbanism to ecology. The moment has been called the Transition Imaginary. The mobilizers are called transition activists, whose role it is, to question the structures of unsustainability that maintain the dominant ontology of devastation (Escobar, 2017). Transition activists are creating alternative models of practice that are collaborative, plural, participatory and distributed, and build on the interconnectedness of all life. This talk will introduce a few new methods, including the Storied Landscape, in which every place has a range of stories and songs associated with it, building our connection with place, increasing our appreciation of the uniqueness of place, reducing the layers between our bodies and the earth, and inspiring concepts of interactive responsibility.

Wanda Dalla Costa  AIA, FRAIC, LEED A.P. , Saddle Lake Cree Nation

Principal, Tawaw Architecture Collective

Director and Founder, Indigenous Design Collaborative

Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, FRAIC, LEED A.P. is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. Her firm, Tawaw Architecture Collective (www.TawArc.com) has offices in both Phoenix and Calgary. At Arizona State University, she is the director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative, a community-driven design and construction program, which brings together tribal community members, industry, and a multidisciplinary team of ASU students and faculty to co-design and co-develop solutions for tribal communities. Her teaching and research are focused on Indigenous ways of knowing and being, co-design methodologies, sustainable design, and the resiliency of vernacular architectures. Dalla Costa received an Honorary Doctorate in 2023 from Athabasca University. In 2022, she was also recognized as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada, and in 2019, she was recognized as a YBCA 100 recipient by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a list that celebrates people, organizations, and movements shifting culture through ideas, their art, and their activism.