PRACTICE
A designer-organizer framework for community power Sophie Weston Chien
PRACTICE
This thesis operates on two levels—the creation of a project and the creation of a practice. The project inhabits this work in a real place, imagining community power in remote Shishmaref, Alaska. The practice learns from the project and creates the framework for agency, developing my role as a designer-organizer.
Rhode Island School of Design
Undergraduate Architecture Thesis
Sophie Weston Chien
Amy Kulper, Advisor
2020
Grounding 06
Project 12
Practice 50
Dialogue 70
Gratitude 78
GROUNDING
This thesis is motivated by a desire to delve deeply into designing community power, and to create structure that enables communities to be agents of their own change. This thesis is grounded by my own experience in Nome, Alaska, where I interned for the National Park Service in Bering Land Bridge National Park. It was there that I learned how people live remotely and through them, the importance of being connected to our natural world. Throughout my education in the Architecture and Landscape Architecture departments at RISD, I have always felt tension between the socioenvironmental
problems at hand and design’s limitations to addressing them. In this frustration I have bolstered my studio practice with learning in communities, observing power dynamics and systemic failures in non-profits and government structures. It is the application of one discipline to another, the spatialization of policy and the bureaucracy of space that I am interested in revising.
The personal can’t be separated from the political. In Western Alaska, I experienced something profoundly personal. I grew up in the American South, only exposed to White and Black culture, and didn’t see any community that looked like me, a mixed race person. It felt otherworldly that in Nome, I looked more at home than any other place in the world. For the first time, I passed as a local, a native to a place. This connection has persisted, and even as I left I have been
concerned with the Inupiat communities of Western Alaska, paying close attention to how the personal and political play out in a place most people don’t even know exists. Shishmaref is home to some of the first climate refugees in the United States, and has voted to relocate from its shrinking island several times, but remains in place. $50 million has already been spent on planning to move inland, but several obstacles remain. This thesis revises the last vote, and imagines a new future.
PROJECT
As designer-organizer, the linkages of governance, local community and ecology are prioritized to create a more just future. Local knowledge is used to interrogate contradictions, considering when systems uphold or reduce community power.
A vote to migrate is approved by representatives, in coordination with the elders and a keystone species, the arctic fox. Keystone species are named after a building keystone, and are crutial to the balance of a healthy ecosystem.
The Bureau of Migration is tasked with the logistics of the move. One of the important aspects they will consider is maintaining ties to the coast, as the community of Kigiqtuq has been stationed on the ocean for the last 400 years. The coast supports subsistence salmon harvests. Salmon is preserved using indigenous technology, included the ulu knife and drying racks positioned to maximize sea breeze.
Qalugruaq salmon Drying + Preserving Salmon is preserved primarily by drying, as smoking takes too much energy. The strong winds keep pests away, and the dried salmon is eaten throughout the year. The harvest is shared with elders, and those unable to hunt themselves. Inisiaq fish/meat rack
Ulu knife used to skin and clean animals
New Site
formerly Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
The migration path is determined through a study of the state, finding a place that connects the community to cultural ties but shelters Kigiqtuq from effects of coastal erosion. Since the land was seceded back to them from the National Park Service, they can restore many traditional practices. This secession was a key initiative of the Environment Justice Department last administration.
As the plan is implemented, the community begins the process of migrating their homes. They load the reusable materials onto a barge to transport to the other side of the bay, where their new base camp will be.
Permafrost
Active Layer
Rock Riprap Gravel Bedding Filter Material
Surface Water
The move is synced up to the yearly cycles of life in Kigiqtuq, and over the years infrastructure has migrated along with the community. Between seasons of hunting, fishing and gathering, the move is made. The slower and shorter sea ice formation during winter allows them more time to navigate the warmer open water.
In coordination with the other state departments, the Bureau of Subsistence meets with neighbors from other villages that specialize in hunting land mammals, such as the Western Arctic Caribou Herd that will now run closer to Kigiqtuq.
Tuttu caribou Diet + Ground Cover Maniq tussock grasses
Niqaaq lichen
Nautnaq arctic cotton
Quppiqutaq fireweed flower
Qaluk fish fish are the primary means of subsistence to the people of Kigiqtuq, and a robust winter harvest is vital to their well-being year round
Qalugruaq salmon
Uqsruqtuuq herring
Uugaq tomcod
Qalupiaq whitefish
IĹ‚huagniq smelt
As the seasons change, the people of Kigiqtuq are able to return to the island, to the winter camps left in the least vulnerable area, on snowmobiles over the frozen bay.
The migration back allows them to continue ice fishing, securing a key part of their subsistence for the year. This way the people of Kigiqtuq retain intimate knowledge of the sea ice.
Tuvaqtaq Bottom-fast Ice
Ignignaq Flat Ice Zone
Qalunniaq Ice Fishing
Ivuniq Pressure Ridge
Iiquaq Floating Add-on
Turvik foundation thaw bulbs occur when heat is transferred from the building to the permafrost, melting it and destabilizing the foundation initial condition
thaw bulbs formed
foundation failure
Adfreeze piles are the most common permafrost construction, allowing for air circulation below the building.
As they return to the inlet, they celebrate the harvest with the elders. The houses have been raised to accommodate a full thermal break from the permafrost, preventing foundation failure by transference of heat to permafrost.
Some of the new neighbors, the muskox, come for a visit in the spring, and the Ways of Knowing Agency uses it as an opportunity to teach a unit on gathering and processing qiviut, a fiber important for insulative clothing.
Imummak muskox Qiviut winter wool from muskox qiviut is one of the most expensive fibers in the world, and has very high insulation properties
wool is cleaned and carded (machine above), and then spun into skeins (below)
the yarn is then knit into sweaters, mittens and other insulation layers to protect from the extreme cold
As the years go on, the community monitors its living landscape, as birds shift migrations, pingos form and thaw, and patterned ground expands. The Bureau of Migration explores new potential routes, to expand the village further east. The work of a designerorganizer is to engage building community power at many scales.
Attentiveness to Lifeways
Reparative Thinking
Understanding Community Needs
Using Local Knowledge
(1) Designer-Organizer Framework (2) Process (3) Revisionism (4) Discipline (5) Expertise (6) Mission (7) Amplification (8) Location (9) Scope
PRACTICE
(1) Designer-Organizer Framework
(1) What does the speculative future teach us? This story operates under a Designer-Organizer Framework and can be used to trace the steps required to conceptualize this radical future. (2) The Designer-Organizer Framework can be applied to a traditional architecture project timeline to create a new process, embedding the impacted community within the process. (3) Revisionism is at the core of the practice, thinking holistically about how structures and coalitions are formed and how power is configured.
(2) Process
(3) Revisionism Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Commission (2002) Federal U.S. Bureau of Land Management Alaska U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Housing and Urban Development U.S. Department of Commerce Denali Commission
Regional Corporations Kawerak, Inc. Bering Straits Native Corporation Norton Sound Health Corporation Nome Eskimo Community Sitnasuak Native Corporation Rural Alaska Community Action Program
Local City of Shishmaref Shishmaref Indian Rights Act Council
State Alaska Housing Finance Corporation AK Department of Transportation Department of Health and Social Sciences Fish and Wildlife AK Department of Education and Early Development Village Safe Water Program Division of Emergency Services Department of Community and Economic Development Department of Environmental Conservation Bering Straits School District
Commercial Alaska Village Electric Cooperative TelAlsaka GCI Cable Shishmaref Native Corporation Bering Straits Housing Authority First National Bank Association of Alaska Housing Authorities Alaska Airlines Bering Air Cape Symthe Air Services Hageland Aviation Northern Air Cargo Arctic Transportation Services Lynden Air Cargo
Kigiqtaq Migration Commission (imagined) Seasons Winter Summer Transition
Political Departments Department of Interdependence Bureau of Subsistence Ways of Knowing Agency Environmental Justice Agency Bureau of Migration
Economies Subsistence Capitalist
Ecology Glaciers Permafrost Pingos Sea Ice
Inhabitants Elders Locals Transplants Domesticated Animals Western Arctic Caribou Herd Aviary Migrants Land Migrants Sea Migrants Keystone Species Flora
(4) Discipline
(4) Thinking disciplinary, spaces are expanded using a designer-organizer framework, problematizing jurisdictions and expanding inhabitants. (5) The integration of a diversity of expertise is required, including embodied knowledge to promote shared literacy and reciprocity between practice and community, foregrounding local knowledge only accessible through a deep commitment to the place.
(5) Expertise
(6) Mission
(6) The mission of the practice is fundamentally to work for social and environmental justice, using values from past experiences to create spaces of care. (7) The practice amplifies marginalized perspectives, working to shape new narratives, in the future as realized projects and substantiated work. This project is informed by my own 3 month experience in the region, creating relationships and community through my work.
(7) Amplification
(8) Location
(9) Scope
(8) The designer-organizer operates where it has buy-in from the local community, where it can create systemic change. (9) The shape of the work reflects the scope of the problem, and is relational to the communities, location and scale.
WHO IS THE WORK IN CONVERSATION WITH?
DIALOGUES
This thesis culminates many years of research and conversations that are impossible to record. Strands of the work can be connected to general interests in geography, anthropology, environmental science, policy, architecture, landscape architecture, conservation, indigenous rights, feminism, and globalism. The following samplings of books have been a precious guide as I work with many disciplines and fields of study.
Mediating Environments
Arctic Design Group
Many Norths
Lateral Office
Lo-TEK
Julia Watson
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Rising
Elizabeth Rush
Can Architecture Be An Emancipatory Project?
Joan Ockman
I am grateful for all the people who I have shared conversations with about what it means to be human. Jacob Dolan Craig Weston Ineke Nijssen Emma Chesson Cassandra Cassidy Kevin Jankowski Peter Tagiuri Nicola Ho Grace Oh Tommy Maing Lucy Crelli Emma Werowinski Patrick Hulse Cathy Park Jasmine Gutbrod Will Zhang Didier Lucceus Mingcheng Song Gina Vestuti Ece Cetin Sina Erol
GRATITUDE
Amy thank you for guiding me, Rosanne thank you for mentoring me, Lupe thank you for taking a chance on me, Erika thank you for trusting me, Lili thank you for welcoming me, Amanda thank you for befriending me, Laurence thank you for learning with me, Dad thank you for supporting me, Mom thank you for inspiring me This book is dedicated to all of the communities I’ve been welcomed into during my five years at RISD, that have left me more critical and caring.