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This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Alaskan engineers, builders, and housing experts on cold climate housing design in Native Alaskan communities and explores multiple levels of challenges to designing and building in remote areas. It examines how the history of land ownership and governance in Alaska shapes the imaginaries of engineers and builders working to address housing equity in the state. Specifically, we study cold climate housing projects being carried out in Alaska and compare the design of these projects to wider colonial legacies and failed housing policies. This includes examining both considerations that need to be made at the start of design and engineering projects, as well as how complexity figures into the culture of cold climate engineers and builders in Alaska. Theoretically, this paper draws on Annemarie Mol and John Law’s conceptualization of complexity as a social practice (2002), in which they argue against reductionism by calling attention to the “multiplicity” of ways in which actions and knowledge come into being. In drawing on this work, we seek to engage with multiple histories and worldviews, including dominant notions of “home” that contribute to reproducing housing insecurity and colonial legacies in rural communities (Christensen 2017). Building on this theoretical framework, we thread together a critical description of the social terrain in which engineering and building projects in remote Alaska Native communities are situated. Such situated understandings necessitate engineers and builders working on these projects to think locally while recognizing the broader contributions of home designs developed thousands of miles from the Arctic. The implications of this complexity, we argue, are important for engineering educators and students to incorporate in their approaches to design and engineering learning opportunities across multiple contexts, including engineering programs, construction, architecture, industrial design, environmental and sustainability science, and the social sciences. To address complex challenges in which these disciplines must all take part, engineers and others who make up these teams of diverse expertise must navigate layers of complexity and understand and value how social forces shape building projects. Cold climate contexts like the ones we describe here provide examples that can engage educators, learners, and practitioners.
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Collaborative Housing Design: A Case Study on Developing Learning Activities that Cross Cultural, Climatic and Geographical Differences
Not AvailableIn Designs for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar argues that the act of designing involves “much more than the creation of objects”; it also produces “diverse forms of life and, often, contrasting notions of sociability and the world” (2018: 3). In our anthropological fieldwork with Alaska Native communities that have grappled with housing insecurity issues for multiple generations, we have found this concept to be a reality. As we learned about collaborative housing design practices in Alaska, we found that socio-material artifacts are useful for engaging with a wide range of critical stakeholders. Alternative design frameworks are needed to address the complexity of problems and solutions in remote Alaskan villages, where technological and cultural practices can contrast in settings of extreme climate conditions. As engineering students prepare for complex challenges like those faced in Alaska, they must learn ways of adapting to and developing alternative design frameworks. Drawing on Escobar’s frame of “sociability,” we have developed a series of design learning activities that guide students in alternative design projects while learning about the Alaskan context using situated examples from our anthropological fieldwork and research. In learning contexts ranging from design courses to community co-design and engineering workshops that we are currently planning, we are integrating active learning activities that bring our experiences to the classroom and offer opportunities for learners to imagine, hack, and make. In this paper, we explore theoretical and alternative design frameworks for integrating research into school and work, using a studentdesigned learning artifact called AlaskaCraft as an example of how the complexity of this history and research has made its way into the classroom.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2321931
- PAR ID:
- 10664615
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- design active learning complexity anthropology Alaska housing
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--56105
