1.5 ConEd Learning Hours

10:30 a.m.‐12:00 p.m.

Taylor Architecture Group is a Yellowknife‐based firm that works for remote Indigenous communities across Canada’s three northern territories. It has  been working with the Dene community of Fort Good Hope (just below the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories) to support plans for self‐determination in housing.
This presentation will share three interrelated narratives about the Northern housing crisis, exploring the historical context, current challenges, and accounts of innovative grassroots solutions that strive to address housing, wealth distribution, and Reconciliation together. These stories illustrate how housing design is situated at a critical point within a complex socioeconomic and cultural landscape—and how the role of the architect might evolve in response. The key narrative follows the community of Fort Good Hope in its ambition to develop a local Construction Centre, which—in response to  housing disrepair and overcrowding, unemployment, and labour shortages—will equip the remote community of only 600 people to begin manufacturing their own homes.

Learning Objectives

1. Gain nuanced understanding of socioeconomic factors influencing housing in remote Indigenous communities.
2. Apply the skill set and knowledge base of the architect to support grassroots initiatives, and meaningfully facilitate place‐based capacity‐building with dignity. (This process brings the designer beyond the role typically defined by the profession.)
3. Consider a new form of ‘responsiveness to site:’ designing for economic and systemic contexts.


Kristel Derkowski
Manager of Research and Development
Taylor Architecture Group
Kristel Derkowski is the R&D Manager at TAG’s Yellowknife office (Northwest Territories). Her recent work focuses on three areas: Identifying driving factors behind the Northern housing crisis, understanding the landscape of training and employment  in remote communities, and applying these findings in real‐world scenarios. Her recent projects have included master planning for three campuses and 21 community   learning centres of a polytechnic university, and the facilitation of a locally led initiative to establish a Construction Centre in the remote community of Fort Good  Hope, NWT. Kristel has an educational background in architecture, environmental design and welding, and diverse professional experience including as a published author, remote camp foreman, and president of Makerspace YK, a Yellowknife‐based   non‐profit supporting hands‐on skill‐building.

Jason McMillan, NWTAA, MRAIC
Managing Associate
Architect Taylor Architecture Group
Jason McMillan manages TAG’s Whitehorse office, overseeing the firm’s Yukon‐based  projects. His recent experience includes Dän Laachewdäw Kú gathering house for First Nation of Na‐Cho Nyak Dun, Kêts’ádań Kù ̨ K‐12 school for  Kluane First Nation, a new wellness centre on the traditional territory of Yellowknives Dene First Nation, and a wide variety of housing projects  across the Northwest Territories. Before joining TAG, Jason was awarded the OAA Guild Medal and Canadian Architect Student Award of Excellence for his research on adaptable collective housing types for Inuit communities, for part of which he spent six weeks conducting ethnographic research in Arviat, Nunavut.