Native Material Culture
Beaverbank,
Beaverbank, Nova Scotia, 1998
Richard Kroeker
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Richard Kroeker’s designs exemplify his longstanding engagement with and commitment to the First Nations of Canada, and may be understood as a part of the modern search for the anthropological origins of architecture. In determining both where and how to build new structures, he begins with a careful study of the remnants of previous inhabitants. Inspired by the structure of the birch bark canoe, first made at the time of the pyramids, “the essential strategy in this work is to do more with less. Making this instrumental connection gives solidity to cultural survival and renewal.” Employing the human body as the measuring and dimensioning template, his constructions often take the form of assembled forest components, which are built not from construction drawings, but as a series of sequential steps, each a scaffolding for the next. Kroeker’s buildings connect with a range of people from the most advanced structural engineers in the world to his recent work with the Mi’kmaq community, as a “result [of] on an ongoing study of how indigenous approaches can inform contemporary design.”
