. KWE . KWE .
Addition + Renovation
Location: Scarborough, ON
Client: Centennial College
Budget: $120 million
Size: 130,000 sq. ft.
Status: Completed, September 2023
Proponent Team Members: Eladia Smoke and Larissa Roque
With: EllisDon Construction and DIALOG
Winner:
Canadian Interiors Best Of Canada Award- Single Detail, 2024
OAA Design Excellence Award, 2024
The A-Building expansion is a six-storey mass timber, zero-carbon building with academic programming for Centennial College’s School of Engineering Technology and Applied Science programs (ICET). Outdoor learning spaces interweave with interior spaces: Wisdom Hall, a student touch-down atrium, mirrors the rising topography of a north garden planted with native species, and an interior courtyard includes an outdoor classroom and viewing garden visible from all levels.
The expansion will be connected to the existing A-Block building on levels 2 and 3 to provide easy passage between the two buildings, eliminating barriers and improving accessibility.
Smoke Architecture led a collaborative design process with Centennial’s Indigenous Working Group, including knowledge carriers, faculty, and staff. A narrative of seed-growth-culmination-balance arises from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee understandings of spatial configuration and pre-contact cosmology.
The design integrates Indigenous principles and cultural markers with a contemporary aesthetic. Liaising closely with a multidisciplinary project delivery team, Smoke Architecture embeds Indigenous perspectives in a way that resonates with all cultures, since we all share a connection to land.
At the Balance Centrestone, Haudenosaunee wampum and Anishinaabe Mishomis | Grandfather teachings are featured on the prominent northwest corner. Pavement markers at the internal courtyard student gathering circle align to the noon sun for each full moon, with Anishinaabe lunar month names that recall our connection with the life that surrounds and supports us. This outdoor classroom directly connects to the indoor Indigenous Commons and administrative suite to support Indigenous rhythms of work and gathering. This courtyard is a highly usable, semi-sheltered area that emphasizes a reconnection with earth, sky, and the natural rhythms of all life.
A north garden is filled with native species and terraced to work with the natural rise of the land. An outdoor amphitheatre welcomes either informal student gathering or outdoor classes. Alongside the north garden and amphitheatre, the student-filled atrium Wisdom Hall mirrors the rise of land, and is designed on principles of the Midewigan, an open-frame bentwood teaching lodge.
Wisdom Hall culminates in the Indigenous Commons, a space for classes, events, and ceremony inspired by the Nimii-Idiwigamig | Anishinaabe Roundhouse. This is the beating heart of the building, connecting all main arteries: north garden entry, Wisdom Hall, internal courtyard, Indigenous Administration suite, and Balance Centrestone.
This project demonstrates a successful and compelling realization of Indigenous values and principles in a learning space that integrates interior with exterior. As in the University of Waterloo’s New Indigenization Team Suite, this project demonstrates the powerful narratives that emerge when Indigenous perspectives are integrated into a place that welcomes all cultures.
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All photos credit to Riley Snelling
Location: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
Client: Algoma University
Budget: $33.7 million
Size: 30,350 sq. ft.
Status: Contract Documents
Team: Smoke Architecture Inc. with Moriyama & Teshima
Winner:
WAF Future Project: Education, 2022
Canadian Architect Magazine Award of Excellence, 2022
Guided by the principles of environmental stewardship and inclusivity, the Algoma University Master Plan helped us identify two “axes” on the campus. One axis is an academic journey, the other axis is a spiritual journey - stretching from the water and through the forest. We imagine that Mukqua Waakaa’igan, together with the forest, creates an opportunity to knit these axes together and heal our relationship with nature and each other. The proposed concept focuses on the East as a place of entry, gathering and connectively with nature, the South as a direction that connects us back to the water, the West as space of entry into reconciliation and healing at the front door of the campus and the North as a transformative pathway for the youth to connect with the crying rock, the new student space and the athletics centre. Mukqua Waakaa’igan will knit into the proposed bike and pedestrian paths and be a place of choice along a journey. The forest undergrowth (now overgrown with introduced species) can be remediated over time and can become an influence on the green spaces of the campus by replacing lawn with dry and wet meadow and giving character to this special place with a Special Mission.
The vision for this project is a building that blurs the lines between building and land, indoor and outdoor and creates choices for students, staff, visitors and faculty. These choices are places of learning and gathering but also pathways that permit encounters with the difficult history of the site, permit exploration of new experiences and perspectives and reveal our place on the planet. Mukqua Waakaa-igan will also create possibilities for new ways of learning and teaching that use the building and site as a place of exploration, grounding and discovery. The building becomes the landscape and is accessible to all. It provides an opportunity to heal oneself by creating a new perspective on the residential school, to orient and ground oneself by allowing for a variety of views to the context, and to foster a sense of hope and endurance by reconnecting to the distant views of the water, the origin of all life.
At the intersection of the cardinal axes the main interior gathering space will be the beating heart of Algoma University. This place of cross-cultural learning and teaching is underpinned by the Anishinaabe traditions and values. Imagine a place where one can teach and learn through the eyes of the indigenous heritage and where the views and perspectives of all are welcomed and shared in hope of creating understanding and respect for each other and for the planet.
Wihkask | The Sweetgrass Path: there are three paths of past, present, and future. As we walk it, there may be turns, ups and downs where we don’t know quite where we’re going, but that path is our life, intertwining spirit, mind, and body, the essence of creation.
Past: the direction of memory and honouring what our children experienced in these places, how our children are still being taken from us, and how it continues to affect us.
Present: where we are, where we’re from, where we’re going; the water we came from, the forest on one side and colonial impacts on the other; the wider campus of learning and starting on our path through life. From high on top of Mukqua’s shoulders we see colonial trauma from a new perspective, with ndinawemaaginadog | all our relations around supporting us.
Future: the living edge of cultural learning spaces that connect inside and outside, the revitalized forest that reinvigorates this building and the whole campus, moving water alongside.
Location: Kingston, ON
Client: Queen’s University
Budget: $628,000
Size: 1000 sq. ft.
Status: Completed, 2023
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Jennifer Kinnunen, Chelsea Jacobs
Landscape Architect: Vertechs Design, Spruce Labs
The Indigenous Gathering Space at Queen’s University is an outdoor classroom inspired by the wakaaigan | teaching lodge, a bentwood frame clad in wiigwaas | birchbark. The pre-contract form has been used for knowledge sharing from time immemorial to the present day in Anishinaabeg territories.
Designed collaboratively with Indigenous faculty and advisors, this outdoor-integrated learning space is usable year-round, accommodating a central fire and audio-visual capability. The space can be entirely enclosed or fully opened to the four cardinal directions using insulated rolling overhead doors. The curved glulam frame and enclosure of cedar over bent ribs celebrates the warmth and flexibility of wood, while daylighting from above connects the realms of sky and earth. The complementary landscape works with existing topography and paths to achieve full accessibility to the nearby Indigenous learning suite in Mackintosh-Correy Hall. An existing service road is transformed into a pedestrian experience naturalized with Indigenous plantings and lined with informal outdoor learning and seating areas.
Smoke Architecture collaborated with landscape architects Vertechs and Indigenous-led Spruce Labs to weave Indigenous principles back into the landscape, and with engineers Arup to reinterpret the bentwood precedent of the wakaaiigan.
Photos by Francis Fougere
Location: Hamilton, Ontario
Client: Mohawk College
Size: 860 sq. ft.
Status: Completed fall 2024
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Esther Link, Jennifer Kinnunen
Smoke Architecture worked closely with Mohawk College to re envision and renovate the underutilized multipurpose rotunda in the I-wing Building into an Indigenous Gathering Space for both students, faculty and community members to use. SAI facilitated an engagement session with Indigenous members of the community, and the students, staff and faculty at Mohawk College early on in the process to get their input on the vision for the space.
The existing Rotunda presented some unique design opportunities. The circular nature of the room is perfectly suited to the tradition of gathering in a circle to learn, share and engage. To support the tradition of gathering, the team took the opportunity to address the acoustics in the space. This included adding acoustic panels on the upper walls of the triple height space and an impressive eight-point star ceiling feature that connects users with the four directions. Additional AV and HVAC upgrades were implemented to support users ability to smudge in the space including adding formal entry doors and a display cabinet to enclose the space.
The design drew inspiration from traditional Indigenous design elements. The space was tied together by a large mural designed by Philip Cote, an Indigenous artist. Cote describes this mural as a visual land acknowledgement. The addition of modular furniture that accommodated this layout was key to ensuring the space could be used effectively.
Feasibility Study
Location: Whitefish Bay, Ontario
Client: Lac Seul First Nation
Status: Study completed 2022
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Chelsea Jacobs
With: S. Barnett and Associates
LSFN’s current Whitefish Bay school is a repurposed single family home. The new school will serve a wider catchment area, supported by a demographic analysis and needs assessment. The school also includes a licensed daycare for infants and toddlers, currently not available in Whitefish Bay. The design of the school is inspired by the context of residences in the community and the geometric patterns found in local artisanship, graphic design, and material culture. The school opens directly onto outdoor learning spaces to better support traditional learning, with spaces allocated for a teaching lodge, wild food processing area, outdoor fire and ceremony. There is a half gym in the new school that will free up the nearby existing hall for community use.
Location: Kejick Bay, ON
Client: Lac Seul First Nation
Size: 8850 sq. ft. addtion
Status: Construction
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Larissa Roque, Kyara Wendling
The Waninitawingaang Memorial school is located in the community of Kejick Bay, ON. WMS has been in operation for 10 years under the guiding principles of the Lac Seul education authority.
The design presented by SAI expands the existing school with the addition of a half gymnasium, a messy room, designed to invite student’s creativity and cultural identity and a daycare, with education spaces for toddlers and preschoolers, to the building. These new additions are designed to improves the interior and exterior environmental qualities for the user and support staff, students and community members to achieve learning goal and overall population growth.
Location: Frenchman’s Head, ON
Client: Lac Seul First Nation
Size: 5,630 sq. ft. addtion
Value: $3.7 million
Status: Construction
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Julie Bédard, Kyara Wendling
Smoke Architecture is working with Lac Seul First Nation to expand its existing Obishikokaang Elementary School to meet the growing needs of the community. The school is located in the heart of Frenchman’s Head, one of three communities that make up Lac Seul First Nation. Located close to the arena, parks and other amenities, the school in partnership with the community provides learning opportunities which support, challenge, and inspire all students.
Based on previous planning and programming, both expansions sit at the extremities of the existing Y-shaped layout. While the classroom extension was designed in continuity with the existing building, the daycare extension discreetly affirms its presence as a complementary program to Obishikokaang Elementary School.
The key programming added to the school by the classroom extension is the Messy Room. This small-scale project room reflects the nation’s vision of youth education embedded in traditional practices and teachings of the Land. At the other side of the school, the daycare extension centers itself on a generous double height corridor that creates a welcoming experience for children, staff and parents while taking advantage of the morning sunlight from above - a nod to traditional indigenous architecture of the region. The interior design and graphics throughout the daycare seek to enhance a sense of belonging and cultural identity while providing a soothing environment for learning and development.
Location: Tyendinaga, Ontario
Client: Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte
Budget: $5.86 million
Size: 16,586 sq.ft.
Status: Study completed 2023
Team Members: Eladia Smoke, Jennifer Kinnunen
Tyendinaga has outgrown its current childcare spaces, and this new facility is modeled on the Haudenosaunee longhouse layout of interior spaces. Common areas are aligned in the centre, while individual play spaces line the perimeter and open directly onto a play and teaching landscape of indigenous plants. The play spaces create an easy transition between inside and outside activities. Youth after-school activities are included, along with licensed daycare spaces for infants and toddlers. The centre creates a learning pathway between MBQ’s existing school and library, developing the site into a welcoming shared space for community. The study completed 2023 includes a demographic analysis needs assessment and Class C construction estimate.
