Course code changed

ALD4102H S 
Instructor: Rafico Ruiz
Meeting Section: LEC0101
Monday 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

How do we think about relationships between land and placemaking? This seminar positions design, curatorial practice, and research in relation to land as soil, territory, home, field, site, relation, sovereignty, water, and other conditions that come with accounting for land as more than the ground for building to occur.

‘Where does Land Begin? Land and Placemaking through Research and Curatorial Practice?’ enters into dialogue with ᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery until March 22. ᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home centres what it means for Inuit and Sámi communities to be at home on the land, and fosters an active redefinition of what architecture and design can be for Northern Indigenous communities. The seminar is structured by two streams that all students engage in. The first investigates the relationship between land and placemaking as a series of research and methodological propositions, guided by the question of how to listen to land in order to create urgent forms of public-facing design and curatorial work. The second grounds students in the exhibition space and provides a forum for them to engage with the co-curators, designers, and artists directly and indirectly contributing to ᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home in order to understand how land-based commitments shape curatorial, design and arts practices. Seminar participants will also have the opportunity to engage in a one day 'Curatorial School’ at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal in February.

Thinking with media and scholarship that foreground decolonial theory, Indigenous environmental scholarship, and an expanded understanding of curatorial practice, the seminar opens up the relationships between land and placemaking in order to project new commitments to practices of land restoration, justice, reparation, and care. While this seminar is oriented towards doctoral students, participants from the MVS, MLA, professional and post-professional M.Arch., and MUD other programs are welcome.