Nipmuc Design for Empowerment
I have been working with the Nimpuc Native American community of central Massachusetts towards the goal of creating a Culture and Education Center. After an initial period of working in a more conventional engaged process with students in the architecture studio, it became clear that a deeper, more gradual “building up” process would be needed for this significantly disempowered community. I will discuss four of about a dozen different steps we have taken, in order to focus on several questions: 1) what authentic empowerment means in the context of a group like the Nipmuc; 2) how design and design thinking integrated from the get-go can enhance empowerment; 3) and the merits of using purely qualitative observational methods to gauge the effectiveness of the work.
Previously published: Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC), EAAE 2018 Conference: Architectural Research for a Global Community, Philadelphia, PA, and Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) 49 – Social Equity by Design, Oklahoma City, OK, 2018.
Associate Professor Ray K Mann is one of the founding members of the Architecture Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As an innovator in both practice and teaching, her notable projects include the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, the MIT Media Lab ‘Brain Opera’ and numerous high-performance homes throughout the region. Most recently, she has been working with the Nipmuc Native American Tribe of Central Massachusetts to create a Culture and Education Center.