Rethinking Pedagogy: Indigenous Design Collaborative

Tuesday, January 10, 2023
7:00 p.m. on ZOOM*

If you are not a member of CFUW but would like to join us, email cfuwkanata.publicity@gmail.com to

request a link to our ZOOM meeting. We always welcome new members.

Wanda Dalla Costa

* Master, Design Research (City Design), Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles

* Master, Architecture, University of Calgary.

* Honorary Fellow, Royal Architecture Institute of Canada.

* Director, Indigenous Design Collaborative 

Rethinking Pedagogy: Indigenous Design Collaborative (IDC)

Please Join us for a conversation with Wanda Dalla Costa, founder and Director of the IDC at Arizona State University.  IDC functions similar to a Community Design Center. Its mission is to increase understanding, inclusiveness and accuracy in the field, while illuminating undervalued and underexamined ancestral worldviews and value-systems that may contribute to global transformation.

Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, OAA, AAA, LEED A.P.

Wanda is a member of the Saddle Lake First Nation and has spent nearly 20 years working with Indigenous communities in North America. She was honored in 2022, as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada. In 2019 she was recognized as a YBCA 100 recipient by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a list which celebrates people, organizations, and movements shifting culture through ideas, their art, and their activism. At Arizona State University (ASU), she is the director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative, a community-driven design and construction program, which brings together tribal community members, industry, and a multidisciplinary team of ASU students and faculty to co-design and co-develop solutions for tribal communities. Her teaching and research are focused on Indigenous ways of knowing and being, co-design methodologies, sustainable design, and the resiliency of vernacular architectures.

In terms of her practice, Wanda was the first, First Nation woman to become an architect in Canada. Her firm, Tawaw Architectural Collective (www.TawArc.com) is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Recent projects include an Indigenous urban early learning center in Saskatoon, Indigenizing an urban arts district in Calgary, and a renovation for the Indigenous Learning Center at Western University. Wanda was also invited to the 2018 Venice Biennale, world festival in architecture, as part of Unceded, where she joined 18 Indigenous architects from across Turtle Island, to share an Indigenous vision of the future.