Architecture of Reconciliation on the Lachine Canal: A Story of Decolonization over Seven Generations

Abstract

This thesis proposes strategies for architecture to redress the impacts of colonization and industrialization that have overshadowed and erased Indigenous narratives from public memory in lands and waters of Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal). The thesis questions whether architecture can facilitate reconciliation for Indigenous people and decolonize its extractive ways. Perspectives of Indigenous knowledge and the history embedded in the land inform a design methodology that aims to tell a deeper and more complete story of place, while creating a system and platform for Indigenous storytelling and collective healing. The resulting architecture is a series of seven built interventions including programs of community center, daycare, co-housing, and clinic in the former cradle of Canadian industrialization along the Lachine Canal. The design is positioned as a story of architectural possibilities stanced as solidarity from a settler perspective, that reflects upon truths of colonial trauma, and the potentials of reconciliation over seven generations.