David Fortin - Keynote Speaker at International Symposium on Spirituality and Architecture

David was an invited keynote speaker at an online international symposium hosted by the Villore Institute of Technology in India titled “At two vast realms: The architect in practice as a being of world and spirituality.” David’s talk was titled “Towards a Relational Future” and discussed how different approaches to architectural education and practice can encourage more sacred relationships with the Land and Water.

David Fortin joins Sanford Kwinter, Sean Connelly, and Bruce Mau for discussion as part of Digital Futures

“‘You can’t do that, Dad.’- said the Millennial to the Boomer: First Meditations on Indigenous Cosmologies, Urgent Knowledge and Humility” - Online Workshop

On June 29, David joined a discussion with Bruce Mau, Sean Connelly and Sanford Kwinter about Indigenous knowledge and shifts in design towards life-centred design (Mau’s description for design that centres on the betterment of all life). Course taught by Neil Leach, Kwinter, Viktoria Luisa Barbo, and Marina Rodriguez das Neves.

Link to event here.

David Fortin guest speaker on Office Hours with Esther Choi

David was invited to speak about the challenges and opportunities of pursuing a career that tries to balance between professional practice and academia. Hosted by Esther Choi. Office Hours describes itself as follows:

“How Office Hours Works

We transmit professional and experiential knowledge to BIPOC creative practitioners from BIPOC creative practitioners in a collective setting, free of charge. We request that all attendees turn their cameras on for our events and arrive accountable to the group dynamic. Our group mentoring format allows us to practice the values of multi-racial and multi-ethnic solidarity, empathy, and generosity—rather than the tenets of singularity, extraction, and competition—as powerful social tools for imagining how we wish to live and work together.”

David Fortin Lectures at Indigenous Future Institute (University of California San Diego)

“This talk will discuss the colonial premise for contemporary forms of urban life and the possibilities for Indigenous agency within this context. The fantasy of property is presented as central to a detached relationship with the Land that presents significant challenges for alternative futures.”

Hosted by the UCSD Department of Urban Studies and Planning, co-sponsored by The Design Lab, the Institute of Arts and Humanities, and the Indigenous Futures Institute.

Link here

David Fortin invited Keynote for ACSA Administrator's Conference

Event description - “In this panel we hear from five distinguished Indigenous architects who practice as designers, planners, and community organizers while making extensive contributions to scholarship, research and the education of future generations of practitioners. Practice-defining pedagogy that emerged in the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus traditions has persisted for decades. This panel presents contemporaneous alternative Indigenous Practice and Pedagogies, where, from the words of Dr. Jojola, “planning is a culturally responsive and value-based approach to community development; where the measure of form is its cultural meaning rather than building elements as style, function and form; where the process of design is an orchestration of public engagement that gives voice and clarity to built form; where buildings are the narrative of a community and a metaphor for stories that are invested in place and time.” Description here.


Tamarah Begay
Indigenous Design Studio + Architecture & University of New Mexico
Chris Cornelius
studio:indigenous & University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Theodore Jojola
Indigenous Design + Planning Institute & University of New Mexico
David Fortin
David T. Fortin Architect Inc. & Laurentian University
Rau Hoskins
TRIBE Architects & UNITEC Institute of Technology

David Fortin discusses impact of downtown Sudbury location for McEwen School of Architecture

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/celebrating-the-arts-downtown/

“Current director David Fortin explains that every aspect of the campus – from its central location to the building’s exposed architectural details and its use of wood throughout – was designed to support the architecture school’s mandate to serve, and draw inspiration from, Northern Ontario.”