Rural and northern contexts

Professor Morningstar opens the ninth session with a calendar. Across the top she has written the months of the year, and on it she has marked one short window in late summer with a heavy bar. 'This is the sealift,' she says. 'For many villages in western and northern Alaska, almost everything that cannot be flown in, from lumber and windows to fuel and vehicles, arrives by barge during a few weeks in the summer, when rivers and coasts are free of ice. If your building materials miss the boat, your project waits a year. Now tell me how that changes the way you design.' Callum says you would have to order everything months in advance. Ingrid says you would design so that nothing could be forgotten. Wren asks why we would ship lumber at all if the community could build with something else. 'Good,' the professor says. 'Keep asking that.'

Most architectural education assumes a city: a site served by roads, utilities, suppliers, contractors and building inspectors. Much of North America's land, and many of its Indigenous communities, lie far from such services. Rural and remote communities face distinctive challenges in climate, logistics, cost, labor, infrastructure and governance, and they have distinctive strengths in land, knowledge and community. This lesson examines how architecture works in these contexts, with a focus on northern and remote Indigenous communities.

Remote and rural communities

The United States has many rural tribal nations, from the large reservations of the Plains and the Southwest to the Alaska Native villages of the North. The Navajo Nation, the largest reservation by area, covers about 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and many of its homes are far from paved roads and water lines. In Alaska, most of the more than 200 Native villages have no road connection to the rest of the state and depend on air, river and sea transport. In such places, distance shapes every aspect of building, from the price of a sheet of plywood to who is available to install it.

Remote communities are not only places of difficulty. They are often the heart of Indigenous homelands, where people live close to the land, speak their languages and practice land-based ways of life. Good architecture in these places supports that life rather than imposing a southern model. It builds on local knowledge of weather, snow, wind and land, and it leaves skills and ownership in the community.

Climate and land

Northern climates are extreme. Winter temperatures can stay below −22 °F for weeks, winds drive snow into drifts that bury doors and vehicles, and the sun disappears for weeks in the high Arctic winter while it never sets in summer. Buildings must keep heat in, keep snow out and stay safe when power or heating fails. Entrances are usually placed away from the prevailing wind and protected by vestibules, and buildings are oriented and spaced so that drifts form where they do no harm. Many northern buildings are raised off the ground, so that wind scours snow from beneath them instead of piling it against them.

Much of the North sits on permafrost, ground that stays frozen for at least two years in a row. A heated building placed directly on permafrost thaws the ground beneath it, which can make it settle and crack. Northern builders therefore raise buildings on piles driven or drilled into the frozen ground, or on adjustable steel frames and screw jacks that can be relevelled as the ground moves, leaving an air space beneath so that cold air keeps the ground frozen. Some foundations use thermosyphons, sealed pipes that carry heat out of the ground in winter. Climate change is thawing permafrost across the North, damaging buildings, roads and airstrips, and forcing some communities, such as the Yup'ik village of Newtok in Alaska, to plan relocation to safer ground.

Logistics and cost

Construction in remote communities costs far more than in the south, often two to three times as much and sometimes more. Materials must be shipped once a year by sea or barge, trucked over winter roads or flown in at great expense. Workers may need to be flown in and housed. The building season is short, often four or five months, so delays push work into the next year. Equipment such as cranes and concrete trucks may not be available. And mistakes are expensive: a missing part can stop a project for months.

These conditions favor designs that are simple, standardized where it helps, and tolerant of local conditions. Prefabrication, in panels or modules built in a factory in the south and shipped north, shortens the time on site but requires careful planning and transport, and modules must survive rough handling and fit through narrow supply chains. Designs that use fewer, more durable components reduce the risk of missing parts. Designs that local workers can build and maintain keep money and skills in the community and make repairs possible without flying in specialists.

The following script compares three ways of building a small community building in a remote community over twenty-five years: a conventional site-built frame shipped as loose materials, prefabricated modules, and a hybrid that uses local labor with a prefabricated envelope. It includes transport, labor, the risk of a one-year delay and heating costs.

# Twenty-five-year cost of three ways to build in a remote community (thousands of dollars, US)
options = {
    #                      materials  freight  crew    delay_risk  delay_cost  heat_per_year
    "site-built frame":    (900,      450,     1300,   0.30,       600,        42),
    "factory modules":     (1350,     520,     500,    0.15,       700,        30),
    "hybrid, local crew":  (1100,     380,     900,    0.15,       400,        28),
}
years = 25
for name, (mat, freight, crew, p_delay, delay, heat) in options.items():
    capital = mat + freight + crew + p_delay * delay
    life = capital + heat * years
    print(f"{name:20s} capital {capital:6.0f}  heating {heat * years:5.0f}  25-year total {life:6.0f}")
local_share = {"site-built frame": 0.20, "factory modules": 0.10, "hybrid, local crew": 0.60}
for name, share in local_share.items():
    print(f"{name:20s} share of wages paid to community members: {share:.0%}")

site-built frame     capital   2830  heating  1050  25-year total   3880
factory modules      capital   2475  heating   750  25-year total   3225
hybrid, local crew   capital   2440  heating   700  25-year total   3140
site-built frame     share of wages paid to community members: 20%
factory modules      share of wages paid to community members: 10%
hybrid, local crew   share of wages paid to community members: 60%

In this example the factory modules need the least work on site but cost the most in materials, the site-built frame carries the highest risk of delay, and the hybrid has the lowest twenty-five-year cost because it combines a tight factory-made envelope with lower freight and a local crew. It also pays the most wages to community members. The figures are illustrative, but the pattern is common: in remote places, the cheapest building to buy is not always the cheapest to own, and the choice of construction method is also a choice about who benefits.

Infrastructure and services

Many remote communities lack infrastructure that cities take for granted. Many homes on the Navajo Nation and in rural Alaska villages lack running water, and families haul water for drinking, cooking and washing; federal, tribal and nonprofit programs have connected many homes in recent years, but large gaps remain. Electricity in many remote communities comes from diesel generators, with fuel shipped or flown in, which is expensive and polluting; communities are increasingly building solar, wind and storage systems, often owned by the community itself. Sewage may be held in tanks and trucked away. Architects must design buildings that work within these limits: conserving water, reducing energy demand, providing water storage and planning for intermittent power.

Designing with northern and remote communities

Design in northern and remote communities often follows the co-design principles of Lesson 6, with practical adaptations. Meetings may need interpretation into Indigenous languages, such as Inuktitut, Cree or Ojibwe, and they may need to fit around hunting seasons, community events and funerals, which take priority. Design teams often spend extended time in the community rather than flying in for a day. Housing and building designs developed with Inuit communities, for example, have asked for larger entrances and porches to store gear and to remove outdoor clothing, space to cut and share country food on the floor as is traditional, kitchens and living spaces large enough for visiting, cold rooms for storing meat and windows that look out to the land and sea.

Local building cultures are a strength. Many northern and rural communities have skilled builders, carpenters and mechanics, and young people who want to learn trades. Training programs linked to construction projects, community-owned construction companies and designs that local workers can maintain build long-term capacity. Traditional knowledge of snow, wind, ice and land can inform siting and design in ways that no weather file can.

Exercise 9: a remote building logistics plan

This exercise takes about three hours.

• Choose a remote community, and research its transport links, building season, climate and energy supply.
• For a small community building, list the main materials and components and plan how and when each would arrive.
• Identify which parts local workers could build and maintain, and what training would help.
• Deliverable: a logistics calendar, a materials and transport table and a 400-word strategy.

Self-critique checklist

• Have I designed for the community's climate, permafrost and snow conditions?
• Have I planned around the transport calendar?
• Have I considered maintenance by local workers?
• Have I treated the community's knowledge and skills as assets?

Energy and resilience in remote communities

Energy is one of the largest costs of living and building in remote communities. Where electricity comes from diesel generators, it can cost several times as much per kilowatt-hour as in a southern city, and heating fuel must be shipped or flown in. Every kilowatt-hour a building saves is therefore worth far more than in the south, which makes superinsulated envelopes, airtight construction and heat recovery ventilation especially valuable. Many communities are building their own solar arrays, wind turbines and battery storage, often owned and operated by the community, which keep money in the community and reduce dependence on shipped fuel.

Resilience matters as much as efficiency. If the power fails in a northern winter, a house can fall below freezing within a day, and pipes can burst. Designs that keep a building above freezing for longer without power, that provide a backup heat source such as a wood stove where communities want one, and that protect water pipes from freezing can prevent disasters. Designs for community buildings, such as schools and gathering halls, often plan for them to serve as warming shelters during emergencies, with backup power and supplies.