Considering the Ethics and Practices of Educational Design Build in Native American Societies: An Anthropologist’s Perspective

This paper represents a cultural anthropologist’s approach to examining architecture projects undertaken in Native American communities through the efforts of architectural university design-build programs to provide housing. I investigate how architectural faculty have employed ethics in their curricula and their students have interacted with Native communities while executing design-builds. I focus on the DesignBuildBLUFF program taking place in the Utah side of the Navajo Nation and the Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative that was active in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. This paper represents a point of departure for a broader research project that considers the cultural preparation and community engagement techniques utilized for interacting with and designing and building for Native Americans. A conclusion I draw from my data is that design-build studio instructors may incorporate strategies from the “first project” model practiced in the dissertation process in cultural anthropology into their studios to help manage ethical concerns with undertaking design-build programs in underserved and underrepresented communities.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.87

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6