The summer of 2020 marked the beginning of In the Postcolony, a three-year thematic series facilitated through the CCA Master’s Students Program. The series aims to examine how architecture and urbanism continue to respond to the long echoes of colonial practices of spatial dispossession. “The Swimming Pools of Nunavut” is the first instalment of the series and probes the social, political, and environmental impacts of creating volumes of warm water in cold climates.

Following this line of inquiry, and in collaboration with invited northern and southern architects, activists and scholars, participants of the 2020 CCA Masters Program turned their attention to the methods and lenses used to analyze the social, environmental, and logistical consequences of the swimming pools. They created an online Toward Unsettling syllabus and supplementary index of short writings—both intended to expand through an open call for submissions from students, designers, activists, and historians.

Misca Birklein-Lagassé
University of Toronto, Canada

Zaven Titizian
University of Waterloo, Canada

Ally Pereira-Edwards
Carleton University, Canada