Built in the heart of the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, Indigenous House moves the institution into a new chapter of rehabilitating its relationship with Canada’s Indigenous population.

Indigenous House will provide a home for a mix of academic and social spaces. The program includes offices for the Elders and other Indigenous staff, dedicated rooms for research and scholarship in areas such as language preservation, spaces for regular and continuing education opportunities, exhibition areas, and gathering spaces.

The site offers long views over Highland Creek Ravine, one of the region’s many ravines undergoing rediscovery and renewal. In consultation with local Elders, the grounds and surrounding area will be planted with medicinal and other native tree and plant species including a thicket of birch trees, ensuring that the Indigenous House will mature and evolve over time to become a natural and enriching heart of the Indigenous community and the university’s Scarborough campus.

Inspired by the form of a wigwam, the two-storey building expresses Indigeneity in its construction, aesthetics and engineering. Its distinctive ovoid structure will be composed of expressive curved glue-laminated timber, recalling traditional bentwood construction techniques. The offices and services are situated at the centre of the building, with round gathering spaces anchoring each end. An atrium will draw connections between the two levels while strengthening the round expression of the ceremonial spaces. At the western end of the building, an ascending ramp framed by medicinal plants leads to a second floor viewing deck, overlooking a large outdoor gathering area.

The building integrates passive house strategies and a ventilation system inspired by historic precedents. The use of earth tubes to temper air depending on the season is inspired by a diagram where a birch bark tube is routed to a fireplace in a wigwam to bring in fresh air from outside to feed oxygen to the flame. Similarly the building’s fresh air will pass through a concrete totem intake and flow through a series of underground air tubes taking advantage of the geothermal qualities of soil to pre-heat or pre-cool air before it gets to the HVAC system.