Mass Timber Today Podcast Episode 9 featuring Eladia Smoke, founding principal of Smoke Architecture
Tune in to a new episode of the Mass Timber Today Podcast!
In this episode, Anne Koven speaks with Eladia Smoke, who is the founding principal of Smoke Architecture. Eladia Smoke is Anishinaabekwe from Obishikokaang | Lac Seul First Nation, with family roots in Alderville First Nation, Winnipeg, and Toronto. Throughout this conversation, Eladia discusses her work in the mass timber sector and highlights the importance of Indigenous design principles. She shares her experience with mass timber projects and highlights how mass timber can tie in with traditional Indigenous building methods. Putting emphasis on the need to bring meaning and cultural awareness into buildings, she discusses the challenges and opportunities involved in teaching Indigenous architecture in universities. Eladia also discusses the potential for Indigenous leadership in forest stewardship and mass timber manufacturing.
Highlights from this episode:
“To me, when we make responsible decisions about the materiality we are representing the space with – what we build with, how we build it, the stories that what we build tell – that’s how we can get over this hump of being an extractive species”
“We need to widen our view of our kinship responsibilities – all those life systems that support us that we depend on – because forest stewardship is definitely more than just the trees.”
“Processing is another area I really feel Indigenous peoples could have a leadership role. Right now, we have a very limited number of mills across the nation that can provide mass timber products and we have observed in the architectural field that the demand is actually outstripping the supply in some cases.”
