Architectural Record 2015-02

70
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD FEBRUARY 2015 RITUAL AND RETREAT
Muckleshoot Smokehouse | Auburn, Washington | Mahlum
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A communal space celebrates a Native American
tribe’s identity and helps keep age-old rituals alive.
BY ADELE WEDER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER
:hen the U.S. government subjugated Native American territories
in the 19th century, the loss of communality was one of the
most destructive consequences. With the tribes’ traditional ways
of living, working, and celebrating together severely curtailed
or outlawed, communal architecture, exemplified by the longhouse,
became untenable. But in recent decades, the Muckleshoot
Indian Tribe of the Pacific Northwest, like many others, has
been reacquiring their lands, rebuilding, and restoring their traditions and rituals.
The Muckleshoot’s new Smokehouse, built on their reservation near Tacoma,
Washington, marks the tribe’s first longhouse in over a century.
The building’s prosaic name belies its spiritual importance and programmatic
ambition: the Smokehouse is not a workaday meat-and-fish smokery but a large
multiuse space for the practice of the Smokehouse faith, also known as Seowyn
and observed by various Native Americans throughout the region. The Seattlebased
architecture firm Mahlum had already honed an important relationship
with the Muckleshoot, having previously designed a school and childcare center
for them. While drawing on culturally specific requirements, such as a dirt floor,
wood-based heating, and the use of locally sourced materials, the architects’
scheme addresses the universal values of communal gathering and sharing, says
Gerald (Butch) Reifert, managing partner at Mahlum: “We like to say that we
work to improve the human condition, whatever that is.”
The Muckleshoot chose the form of a longhouse, a building type designed for
winter reunion, which is at the heart of the Smokehouse faith. Usually a singleroom
structure, this version is divided into two main halls, as well as an adjoining
room for smaller meetings and rituals. These are linked by a contiguous roof
with strategically interwoven outdoor spaces underneath, such as a covered area
with a grill for al fresco cooking of elk, salmon, and oysters.
In the tradition of longhouse construction, the Smokehouse, clad in darkstained
cedar, is a post-and-beam structure built with logs culled from the nearby
Cascade Mountains; its main components were prefabricated off-site and then
transported for assembly. Within the enormous, dimly lit interiors, with their
massive redwood cedar trunks that support the spaces like baroque columns, you
GRAND ENTRANCE
Visitors pass through
a central open space
into the performance
hall on the left or
dining room on the
right. Huge red-cedar
logs serve as both
supporting columns
for a framework of
Douglas Fir header
logs as well as
symbolic sentinels
for the Smokehouse.
Variegated tongueand-groove
cedar
cladding brings the
expansive facade
down to a human scale.