Architect with Indigenous Heritage
His experiences while growing up on an Indian reservation informed his adult ideas about designing buildings with his heritage and the environment in mind.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
CC is the son of Native Americans, members of the Oneida Indian tribe. His father was a brick mason, his mother a homemaker. The family lived in public housing on the Oneida Indian reservation, five miles west of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
CHILDHOOD INTERESTS
Growing up, CC did not envision a future as an architect. He was surrounded by poverty. The only hot meal he received was the free lunch at his off-reservation school. And yet sleeping in the living room of his family’s ranch home near a wood-burning stove turned out to be a formative experience.
EDUCATION
CC excelled in drawing and architectural drafting, but higher education wasn’t his plan until a guidance counselor – a fellow Oneida – directed him to federal grants programs for native people to attend college. It led him to major in architecture at a state university, where he connected with Indigenous students and started thinking about what Indigenous architecture could be.
HERITAGE THOUGHTS LEAD TO A CAREER PATH
“There were a lot of buildings in our culture that made simple, symbolic references like animals or traditional longhouses and wigwams,” said CC. “Turtles are very important to Oneida, but the turtle-shaped school on the reservation didn’t have an impact on people. I wanted to think critically about what was being built, what stories were being told, and how people would experience it.”
CC began designing small projects for the Oneida, as well as teaching at the university and doing his own speculative designs. After attending graduate school at another university away from his home state, he was invited to collaborate with an architect who had just won a competition to design an Indian community school back in Wisconsin.
Together, CC and the more experienced architect proposed a sustainable, nature-integrated building that manifested Oneida traditions of caring for the land. “CC understood us and asked the right questions,” said the school’s Board chairman.
Cradled in a hillside among old-growth trees, the school is made of wood, copper, and local limestone. It connects indoors and outdoors with large windows and expansive outside learning areas, including ponds, wetlands, and an open-air lab. “We designed these varied learning environments to be as noninstitutional as possible in order to rethink how Indigenous students can learn in noncolonial settings,” said CC.
CAREER CHALLENGE – COPING WITH CRITICS
The Indian community school is popular with its students, teachers, and parents. Others, preferring more straightforward, recognizable patterns and vivid colors, have been critical of the design, saying the architecture isn’t Indigenous enough and should include motifs and shapes such as turtles and eagles.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Among the community events held on the school grounds was the “Bear Moon Pow Wow” when leaders of indigenous schools in Hawaii, took inspiration from the use of the Oneida’s space and have incorporated similar outdoor gathering spaces into their own buildings.
(Editor – Note the old adage: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”)
CC’s big, independent opportunity came when he won a prize for his part in an exhibition within a center for modern architecture. CC designed and supervised construction of “Wiikiaami” a pavilion that acknowledged the Delaware, Kickapoo, Miami, and Shawnee Nations who lived on the land long before it was studded by later masterpieces of famous architects. CC’s structure is made of translucent steel ‘feathers’ draped over a bent steel structure. “I wanted to replicate the process of making a wigwam, not make an actual wigwam,” said CC.
The project caught the attention of the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, who later invited CC to teach a design studio class at Yale, on housing. “CC brought a voice to our students that they hadn’t heard before,” said the Yale dean. “He is expanding the canon of what architecture can be. This also resonated with many of our international students since there is indigenous architecture around the world.
Other architects have taken notice of CC’s influential work, as demonstrated by a prototype, compact home proposed as an alternative model of public housing for a new indigenous culture, offering features notably missing from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) structures: porches, fireplaces, sky views and places for animals to live.
“The government housing on the reservation (where CC grew up) was a tool of colonialism and assimilation. It didn’t have anything to do with our culture,” said CC. “We had basketball courts because that is what HUD was building in urban housing projects.”
At another university, CC is continuing a legacy when the school hosts the Indigenous Design + Planning Institute and offers a certificate in indigenous planning. CC leads conversations about the lessons of Indigenous architects from the past: how to design domestic environments with more communal and flexible spaces, and how to use materials that are more appropriate to a local climate or culture. “There is much to be learned from the practice of not taking more than we need and being good neighbors to plants and animals,” said CC.
This career story is based on an article written by Matt Shaw, published 3/12/23 by the NY Times.
