KIT AND CABOODLE

摘要

Step inside the Seine River First Nation Cultural Centre and you wouldn't be wrong to feel surrounded by nature. Designed by Cohlmeyer Architecture, the building embraces the shapes and textures of local landscapes. At one end is a ceremonial space where you literally walk on a bed of flowers-medicinal plants, folded into the floor, that have long been used by the Ojibwe. Look out from the main hall toward the Seine River and your eyes meander along a billowing canopy of red pines, common in this part of northwestern Ontario. Even the structure's cladding echoes the milieu, riffing off the patterns of nearby trees. Nature as a driving force behind the design seems, well, natural, given the boreal riverside setting. But the cultural centre didn't start this way. A few years ago, the First Nation had been advised to purchase a Lindal prefab timber house to use as its cultural centre. The kit home was assembled, but the resulting building didn't provide the mix of open spaces needed-larger areas for band members to gather and share traditional knowledge, including basket weaving, medicinal plant collection and wild rice cultivation, and smaller rooms for band council staff and meetings. Then, Cohlmeyer Architecture was brought onboard to reimagine kit and caboodle.