. KWE . KWE .
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Client: Toronto Public Library
Budget: $25 million
Size: 28,250 sq. ft.
Status: Tender, expected completion 2025
Proponent Team: Eladia Smoke and Jennifer Kinnunen
With: Perkins & Will
Winner:
Canadian Architect Magazine Award of Merit, 2023
World Architecture News Regional Awards Future Projects - Publicly Accessible, 2024
Toronto Public Library (TPL) is replacing the existing Dawes Road Library that has overreached capacity. It includes the Social Development Finance & Administration Hub (SDFA Hub), offering complementary community-based programming. Founded on regional Indigenous principles, it welcomes knowledge sharing between people from all cultures, creating a sense of place that is rooted in millennia of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat inhabitation and cultural activity that continues to the present.
Outdoor knowledge sharing spaces recall the movement of water at the main level by Dawes & Chapman. A roof garden includes space for a sacred fire. Planted with indigenous species, it directly connects to a circular gathering room inspired by the Anishinaabe Roundhouse, and to the SDFA Hub’s teaching kitchen and community training room. These indoor / outdoor relationships reinforce the interconnectedness of all life and invite land-based knowledge sharing in an urban setting.
Inside, columned floor levels recall the Haudenosaunee longhouse. An east-facing atrium creates interconnection and views. The four columnar roots of the roundhouse connect it to earth and define the central bay of the longhouse, the place of the clan mother.
The roundhouse is a circular space on the third level, reflecting the rhythms of life, opening metaphorical gateways to the seven directions. The design of this space imbeds multiple teachings and narratives.
The star blanket wraps the attention and support of our communities and ancestors around those doing excellent work that benefits the community; here, it honours knowledge sharing between peoples. The blanket has fluid lines of colour and texture, a sense of motion, personality, & spirit to augment the urban context. It clearly signals that this is a safe place for us to come to gather, share, and promote knowledge.
TPL aspires to achieve the highest feasible sustainability goals: Toronto Green Standards include achieving net zero energy, with potential to achieve net zero carbon. Together with community participants, elements that will deliver the greatest impact are aligned with budget, constructability, functionality, and value. This participatory design approach invites community insights to inspire the design & create potential for deeper long-term relationships.
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Client: TO Live
Status: Public Engagement
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Larissa Roque, Chelsea Jacobs
With: Hariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, SLA
Having served the community well for the past 50 years, in its next chapter the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts rises strongly from its honoured heritage foundation with a transformative organizational approach to propel it into the next 50 years.
To honour the Indigenous community in the built environment our exterior expression is inspired by the role of Wampum belts in storytelling, artistry and craft, and as an embodiment of strength in unity. This wrapping of the glass curtain and shimmering mesh along the north-west faces of the STLC and new bridge and interlacing the façade materials into a cohesive expression celebrate the detailing and tensile strength of a well-crafted Wampum belt. These beaded and woven belts have been used as visual memory keepers with patterns signifying an event, an invitation, shared values and/or an agreement between two or more parties. It is the symbolism of unity and creation that resonated with the aspirations of the STLC as a place that brings people together to engage with live storytelling through performance.
Visitors are greeted by the warm and informal atmosphere of a wood-clad, triple-height lobby with views up to activated spaces above. Here, the radial ceiling element beams out from the Main Theatre through the lobby and the central stair acts as a vertical connector—a conceptual and organizational Tree of Life that is rooted in the community and ground floor experience, draws its energy up, and reaches out like branches through the building and to the plaza. The ground floor’s L-shaped public-facing area has a strong, transparent relationship to both Front and Scott streets, with large operable doors opening to allow performances and the lobby’s café culture to flow out to the new plaza. It is the unique reorientation of the theatre that allows the interior public and performance spaces to align with and seamlessly spill out onto Scott St.
The building and landscape strategies work in unison to connect neighbourhood assets and create an accessible social heart in the city for its diverse users. A park-to-plaza approach extends the green character of Berzy Park across Front St. East and continues along a diagonal axis to inhabit the lush pocket space of the new Scott St. Plaza. By extending the street-level experience with a four-season landscape strategy, these key parts of the public realm are combined to strengthen the neighbourhood’s identity and signify the arrival at a vibrant Arts District in the city. Trees and plantings of perennials and deciduous species shelter the space from the traffic of Front St. and provide a daily accessible neighborhood amenity. A large circular open space articulated by paving patterns allows for informal and scheduled gatherings, performances and celebrations, and is otherwise activated by seating and a shallow water feature with lyrical jets for daily enjoyment.
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Client: Assembly of First Nations
Status: Visioning Phase completed July 2019
Design Team: Smoke Architecture Inc., Wanda Dalla Costa Architect, David Fortin Architect, Elder Winnie Pitawanakwat
On Indigenous People’s Day 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the former U.S Embassy in Ottawa would be repurposed as a space for Indigenous Peoples. The Indigenous Peoples Space will encompass the 100 Wellington Street building, 119 Sparks Street (currently a CIBC bank), and a future infill to connect the two existing buildings. This site is on the traditional, unceded territories of the Algonquin Nation.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), in collaboration with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Métis National Council, has partnered with our team to develop a model that will inspire the long-term vision for the Indigenous Peoples Space. The future building will effectively represent First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation peoples’ cultures and histories in such a way that Indigenous governments, institutions and organizations can conduct Nation to Nation business and further our self determination. We welcome you to join us by sharing your thoughts and ideas for building the future.
Location: Allan Gardens, Toronto, ON
Budget: $60,000
Status: Completed, 2019
The Red Embers Team, partnered with The Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto (NWRCT), is the proud recipient of the 2018 Park People’s Public Space Incubator competition. Our installation showcases 13 large-scale red banners suspended from charred wooden gates sited along the pathways of Allan Gardens, each banner designed and decorated by local Indigenous women.
The 13 installations honour the 13 Grandmother Moons within the Lunar System, as the Grandmother Moon is the leader of Feminine life. For a woman who has experienced domestic violence or sexual assault, it is the Grandmother Moon that provides healing and a re-balancing of energy. All 13 installations create a bigger civic platform for artists to share their work and collaboratively design banners that symbolize an intervention into the MMIW inquiry.
While Allan Gardens is an important gathering place for Indigenous peoples, it has also struggled with issues of vandalism and violence. By creating a beautiful intervention that celebrates the design brilliance of Indigenous artists while also memorializing the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), the hope is that the park would open up to new positive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. A smudging ceremony led by Elder Jacqui Lavalley opened the installation June 08, 2019 and it will be displayed throughout the summer and into the autumn to serve as a backdrop for the (MMIW) Sisters in Spirit Vigil held annually on October 4th.
The Red Embers design symbolizes an intervention into the MMIW inquiry storyline. We are still here, we are healing, and we are fighting as a community towards increased inclusion in the land stewardship narrative. The 13 banners symbolize the strength of our matriarchs, and the resilience of Indigenous women that continues to be held together by our matriarchs.
The Red Embers Design Team includes:
Tiffany Creyke (left), Indigenous Designer for Aboriginal Health at Vancouver Coastal Health and a member of the Tahltan First Nation near Dease Lake.
Larissa Roque (middle), intern architect for Smoke Architecture Inc., and Anishinaabekwe of Wahnapitae First Nation near Sudbury.
Lisa Rochon (right), principal of Citylab, design director of the new Canadian Canoe Museum to be sited on a National Historic Site, and former architecture critic for The Globe and Mail.
Charitable Status Partner for Red Embers: the Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto (NWRCT). NWRCT designed 2 of the 13 banners and continues to provide further programming around the installations.
The NWRCT is a community-based organization dedicated to providing resources and support to urban Indigenous women and their families. NWRCT delivers culturally relevant programs and services that empower and build the collective capacity and self-sufficiency of Indigenous women.
Banner by Smoke Architecture Inc.
Eladia Smoke and Larissa Roque designed 1 of the 13 banners titled Animkii -Binese-Kanenh/ag | Bone Thunderbird . This banner displays two thunderbirds, back-to-back, made of bones from roadkill deer.
Each bone is sewn to its partner on the opposing side with copper wire. The blue side of the banner represents the female, while the red side represents the male. If one of the bones falls off the banner, its partner bone will also fall, indicating a weakening of society.
For more information and updates please visit the official Red Embers website www.redembers.ca
We have also been published in Canadian Architect!
Obishikokaang Roundhouse
Location: Whitefish Bay, Ontario
Client: Lac Seul First Nation
Budget: $500,000
Size: 3,850 sq.ft.
Status: Completed, 2023
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Larissa Roque, Julie Bedard
The Obishkokaang Roundhouse is a seven sided roundhouse located in the Whitefish Bay Community in the territory of Lac Seul First Nation. Consisting of a central stage and central clearstorey, the Main Gathering space is supported by a Kitchen and Pantry, washrooms, offices and a separate meeting room. Constructed of wooden walls and roof structure, the Roundhouse provides a much needed public gathering and ceremony space of the community to use.
