A Family Heirloom Helps Architecture Professor Chris Cornelius Imagine a New Future for His Field
As ongoing inspiration for how to bring Indigenous experiences into the built environment, Cornelius looks to the lived-in beauty of his great-grandfather's work gloves.
As ongoing inspiration for how to bring Indigenous experiences into the built environment, Cornelius looks to the lived-in beauty of his great-grandfather's work gloves.
They’ve always had an impact on me because they are sort of this mixture of beauty and utility. In Indigenous cultures, you would make gloves that are highly ornamental—regalia for ceremonies. And then there are work gloves that you would pick up to dig a hole. These sit in the middle of that. As a designer, I’m trying to do a similar thing. I want to make things that work very well but are also unapologetically beautiful.
Chris Cornelius is the founder of Studio:Indigenous and a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin as well as the new chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He has made it his life's work to reflect the identities of Indigenous peoples in architecture and design.
Photo: Jamie Chung
When I became an adult, my mother passed these gloves on to me. I always knew they were special because of the way she cherished them. They belonged to my great-grandfather, who had a small farm, and these were his working gloves. You don’t see these kinds of things in a museum. They’re not merely decorative or ornamental—they’re actually used. I can imagine my great-grandfather’s hands in them.
Photo: Jamie Chung
We need that aspect of beauty in our lives. I think about it in my work to make architecture that is Indigenous. But how do you do that without using tropes? This kind of patterning and beading works on multiple levels to teach us about origins and identity, but for me, it has to remain at human scale—otherwise, it loses its meaning. Translating these things into poetic, spatial experiences can ultimately resonate on a deeper level, beyond the boundaries of race and culture.
Related Reading: Studio:Indigenous Founder Chris Cornelius Is Decolonizing Architecture
