Chisasibi Project & Kuujjuaq Hackathon

Over the years, the MCHG has worked on problems of housing, water, and waste management with First Nations and Inuit communities living primarily in Northern Ontario and Quebec, where systemic disenfranchisement and ecological degradation have deeply impacted the peoples, land, resources, and economies. The MCHG research projects in Big Trout Lake, (northwestern Ontario) and Chisasibi (a Cree village in northern Quebec), present alternatives to top-down and conventional housing and planning. In the 2010s, the MCHG initiated collaborative projects to rethink urbanism, infrastructure, and public space with Inuit communities in Nunavik in northern Quebec. They adapted methods and strategies honed over the previous decades including participatory approaches, site-specific research, and culturally sensitive design. The “hack,” connoting a do-it-yourself, improvisational, and low-cost solution-oriented approach, responds to the rich informal building culture already used by the Inuit throughout northern Canada.


Chisasibi Project: L'Habitat Autochtone et le Genre

The village of Chisasibi in the Eeyou Istchee territory was built in 1981 to resettle the local Cree population forcibly displaced by the construction of the James Bay hydroelectric-power project. The MCHG investigated women’s experiences and opinions about their dwellings, revealing the gap between indigenous living habits and the new housing they were given. The research demonstrates how the community’s women adapted and modified their households to better fit their needs. The research culminated in a final report, entitled L'Habitat Autochtone et le Genre (Indigenous Housing and Gender), which can be found under publications.

 L'habitat autochtone et le genre: une approche sensible de la population crie de Chisasibi.     L'habitat autochtone et le genre: une approche sensible de la population crie de Chisasibi.   L'habitat autochtone et le genre: une approche sensible de la population crie de Chisasibi.     L'habitat autochtone et le genre: une approche sensible de la population crie de Chisasibi.


Kuujjuarapik Planning Workshop & Kuujjuaq Hackathon

For the Kuujjuarapik Planning Workshop, the MCHG members worked with key members of the municipality to generate design proposals for a new village master plan. The design ideas focused on three themes: landscaping and outdoor community spaces, house upgrading to accommodate population growth, and climate-responsive settlement and housing layouts supportive of Inuit lifestyles.

The Kuujjuaq Hackathon brought together an interdisciplinary design team from the MCHG with more than 60 residents of Kuujjuaq. They designed and built a community structure to improve recreational opportunities and enhance the village’s public realm. The resulting outdoor pavilion creatively repurposes found materials from the village dump, emphasizing how inventive reuse and recycling approaches can make the most of available materials. The Hackathon project is described in the book Blueprint for a Hack, co-authored by Vikram Bhatt, David Harlander and Susane Havelka. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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