June 27, 2006

Extreme architecture in far north warrants attention

PETER MITHAM

correspondent

VANCOUVER

Architects working in northern Canada need to listen to their clients as well as the environment in which they’re working, the former chief architect for the Northwest Territories government told participants in a seminar at the 2006 Festival of Architecture in Vancouver.

“What we’ve learned to do is become good listeners and observers,” said Gino Pin, principal of Yellowknife-based Pin/Taylor Architects.

Architects may not be trained to listen, Pin said, but it’s a vital skill in a region where even the simplest of buildings face challenges unknown to architects working further south.

When Pin first worked in the north 30 years ago, he realized he was dealing with something completely different than he was trained to work with in the south.

The 22 communities scattered across the Northwest Territories each has a unique social dynamic and deep-rooted history that prevents a single approach being taken across the region. Add an unforgiving environment and stark landscape with no place to hide, and architects and contractors face significant challenges to making their buildings work for communities.

“I was totally intimidated by the environment I was in.”

Gino Pin - Pin/Taylor Architects

“I was totally intimidated by the environment I was in,” Pin said of his first experiences in the region.

He has since learned to engage communities to ensure the buildings he designs work for clients.

“You’re designing for others, you’re not designing for yourself,” he said, noting that the most successful buildings in terms of use, maintenance and longevity are those that enjoy support of the communities for which they’re designed.

“They may not be buildings that we, as architects, consider good design,” Pin said. “But they are buildings that have been embraced by their communities.”

Pin said using local building materials that allow communities to be active in the construction of a project is one way to facilitate broad community involvement and support for projects.

Sourcing materials locally also helps address the difficulty of bringing building materials into remote communities, where air and barge connections are often the main links with the outside world.

Among the environmental considerations Pin discussed were light, snow and ventilation.

“The importance of light in the North cannot be over-stressed,” Pin said, noting that there is a constant demand for building forms that allow people to shut out the winter’s cold and open up during the warmth of the fleeting northern summer.

The barren lands require architects to consider snowdrifting in their designs, Pin said. Architects should pay attention to the height, length and location of the buildings they’re designing, making sure wind scours doorways rather than drifts snow into them.

Similarly, ventilation takes advantage of the dynamics of cold air. Since a complex mechanical system would be costly to repair in remote locations, Pin often opts to vent buildings with a system of nautical portholes.

A vinyl tube channels air to a porthole on the inside of a building where dwelling occupants can control air flows by opening a porthole. Given the difference in air pressure at extreme cold temperatures, cold air readily rushes into the dwelling when the porthole opens.

Designs that seem to address the various challenges are often based on the traditional, low-lying tents of the region’s First Nations people.

“The tent was really one of the basic forms that people really respond to,” he said.

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