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says Dr. Stephenson. Centennial College Indigenous A COLLEGE OF FIRSTS

staff and faculty worked together with the architects
to imbed these perspectives throughout, going
Centennial College was the very first college to
beyond surface motifs to reach a deeper shared
open its doors to students under William Davis’s
understanding that manifests in architectural space.
plan to establish a public network of community

colleges across Ontario. As Education Minister,
Eladia Smoke, principal of Smoke Architecture, was
Davis recognized the need for an innovative form of
one of the leads on the project. As she explains,
higher education to prepare the demographic wave
“It’s a teaching lodge, and the way you teach is
of “baby boomers” to participate in the economy in
you refer to inspirations from the natural world. So,
new ways: as technologists, business people, social
this is a space that is reminiscent of that because
workers and early childhood educators, among
there’s lots of glass and then you have this wood
many other burgeoning career fields.
framework breaking it up into bays.”

46 JULY 2022 | BUSINESS ELITE CANADA