The Moh-Kins-Tsis Centre for Storytelling celebrates stories as a vital component of indigenous culture, conveying worldviews, philosophies, values, spiritualities, languages, and histories. Imagined as an addition to the University of Calgary campus, we propose a Centre that treasures, celebrates, and amplifies stories that shape indigenous people’s identities.

The Centre consists of spaces that support diverse forms of storytelling: digital and analogue; verbal, visual, and auditory; live and recorded. This includes a maker space, an arts and craft studio, a classroom, a library, an auditorium, a kitchen, an elder’s room, a traditional healing space, and a meditation room, all arrayed around a corridor that encircles the grand hall. Each space is expressed on the building’s exterior as a unique volume. Their irregular, sloping roofs tilt subtly to the south, inviting natural light to enter every space.

The large, central grand hall is a flexible and welcoming space for events, performances, gatherings, exhibitions, and ceremony, drawing inward and weaving together the activities arrayed around it in the building. Its architecture is as expressive as the stories shared within it.

Visit the Moh-Kins-Tsis Centre for Storytelling Animation page for a walk-through video of the model’s interior, and visit the Moh-Kins-Tsis Centre for Storytelling Models page to see physical representations of the same design.