L i t t l e B i g h o r n c o l l e g e
Campus Master Plan, Cultural Learning Lodge, Library / Administration / Tribal Archives Building, Gateway Monument, Driftwood Lodges Learning Center + Dance Arbor, Baaxawuaashe', Crow Agency, MT
C O M P L E T I O N
2008
S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y
Built following LEED Silver criteria
“The new generation of Little Big Horn College campus buildings are environmentally-friendly, reduce waste sent to landfills, conserve energy and water, are healthier and safer for occupants, and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The college has found these processes and methods respect and fit our Crow Indian tradition and culture.”
Situated on the banks of the Little Big Horn River in downtown Crow Agency, the Little Big Horn College is dedicated to Crow higher education and committed to the preservation and protection of Crow culture and language. Over a ten-year period, beginning in 1998, both partners of Glenn + Glenn Architects Engineers, who at that time were teaching at the Montana State University School of Architecture, served as de facto campus architects for the Little Big Horn College, one of Montana’s seven tribal colleges. The new campus design process featured highly interactive community engagement with staff, students, administration, tribal elders, and the reservation community. The community meetings also involved fifteen fifth-year graduate students who focused their design studio on the master plan. The students had little or no knowledge about tribal communities. The studio was an opportunity to become immersed in the indigenous world of the Crow Nation.
The planning and design conversation quickly broadened in scope with a Campus Design Charrette entitled Envisioning Little Big Horn College Community. This was a large-scale, interdisciplinary collaboration between Crow Nation community members, residents of Crow Agency, business people, historians, Little Big Horn College students, faculty, administration, Montana State University School of Architecture faculty and students, and invited design professionals. The consensus-building effort was to explore various Campus Master Plan options and siting opportunities for the future of the college. The envisioning project was recognized nationally in 2003 by the Associated Collegiate Schools of Architecture ACSA Collaborative Practice Award.
That fall’s envisioning process was just the beginning. Over the next ten years, Glenn + Glenn served as Design Architects for a campus of buildings, including the 20,000 SF Driftwood Lodges Learning Center which anchors the Main Street (Mishawaka Avenue) edge of the campus quadrangle, the 5,000 SF Cultural Learning Lodge, the 24,000 SF Library / Administration / Tribal Archives Building, the Gateway Monument, and the ceremonial Dance Arbor.
In the traditional Crow tepee lodge, the entry is from the east. To the west, at the rear of the lodge, is the place of honor where the Chiefs and Elders reside—the keepers of Crow knowledge. In this tradition, the site for the Little Big Horn College Library / Administration / Archives Building is at the ‘rear of the lodge’, on the western edge of campus. The parfleche was a buffalo hide container used by the Plains Tribes to carry important and sacred items, as well as, in later years, documents such as treaties and records. The folded and symmetrically decorated parfleche is used throughout the Library / Administraton / Archives Building to symbolically represent a container of items important to the Crow People.
The structure of the buildings, which includes steel frame, glulam and log, are expressed as a ‘legible’ structure in the tradition of the tepee lodge, the sweat lodge, and sacred Sun Dance Lodge of the Crow. The buildings are culturally responsive-- textures, colors, space planning and building geometries are distinctly Crow. Research into Crow culture, numerology, cosmology, and Plains artifacts such as Crow Nation beadwork and parfleche are reflected in the building designs and details.
A w a r d s
Crow Nation Award for Excellence, Ceremony at the hundredth annual Crow Fair in Crow Agency, MT honored Glenn + Glenn Architects Engineers, PLLC design and planning contributions in Indian Country, 2018
ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, Honors best practices in university-based, community-engaged programs, 2003
P U B L I C A T I O N S
Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture, ORO Editions, 2018
The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, Springer Nature, Singapore, 2018
New Architecture on Indigenous Lands, Design Theory, University of Minnesota Press, 2013
The project is featured in the international documentary film below, Aboriginal Architecture: Living Architecture, directed by independent Cree filmmaker, Paul M. Rickard. The film explores the diversity of Native American architecture in seven tribal communities, and reveals how Native architects are re-interpreting traditional forms for contemporary purposes. Funded by the National Film Board of Canada, broadcast on PBS.