Event_Cognizance. The Spatial Dimension of Iñupiaq Spirituality: Architecture as a Medium of Understanding a Buried Identity

Abstract

As designers, we are trained to take the existing and better it. It is our obligation to ourselves, our mentors, and to past, present, and future societies. Over the course of our training, we develop sacred rituals of interpretation and production of what we know to be tangible architecture. The methods we choose to determine how we physically occupy space become ceremonial. Often, because of these established routines, the events that compose what it means to dwell in these spaces is overshadowed by the assigned program. These events take on their own spatial dimension separate from the visible physical form. This thesis explores the multi-faceted characteristics generated by the impalpable dimension of event architecture in the context of pre-protestant Iñupiaq spirituality.