Making Home Saturday Series: Building Home (Session 4)
Making Home Saturday Series: Building Home (Session 4)
A conversation on building collaboration across space, time, place, and scale through Indigenous Hawaiian architecture
April 26, 2025 – 3:45 p.m. to 5:00 P.m.
For the final Session of the Making Home Saturday Series, join us for a conversation on building collaboration across space, time, place, and scale through Indigenous Hawaiian architecture with architects Sean Connelly (Kanaka Hawai’i / Ilocano) and Dominic Leong (Kanaka Maoli) with filmmaker and curator Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick (Kanaka ʻŌiwi).
“Hālau Kūkulu Hawaiʻi: A Home That Builds Multitudes,” on view in Making Home, presents a hale (building) that embodies grassroots efforts to care for ʻāina, a Native Hawaiian term for land, meaning “that which feeds.” Organized by After Oceanic Built Environments Lab (Established 2010, Honolulu, Hawai‘i) and Leong Leong Architecture (Established 2009, New York, New York), this scalable design builds upon aspects of Indigenous Hawaiian architecture, adapting traditional hale and waʻa (canoe) lashing techniques—using cordage to secure built structures without metal fasteners—for contemporary architectural construction.
After the conversation, panel participants are invited to gather within the hale structure to participate in a Hawaiian tradition of free-flowing exchange of knowledge and experiences called Talk Story.
This program is being held as part of the Making Home Saturday Series: Building Home, a day-long, multi-format public program and celebration taking place across the museum’s galleries and garden involving several Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial designers and architects. Through food, song, storytelling, and conversation, the participants will share the cultural perspectives, models of environmental advocacy, and systems of Indigenous building they explore in their Making Home commissions.
This program is now sold out. Learn more about the other Sessions.
About the Speakers
Sean Connelly (Kanaka Hawai’i / Ilocano) is an artist and building practitioner from Hawai‘i. His practice encompasses decolonial interventions in sculpture, architecture, film, and cartography. As founding director of After Oceanic Built Environments Lab, Connelly’s work cultivates ancestral knowledge, ecological insight, and social justice to forge intergenerational healing, wellbeing, and belonging in the cultural resurgence of ‘Āina (that which feeds). Photo by Sancia Miala Shiba Nash.
Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick (Kanaka ʻŌiwi) is an artist, curator, and educator from Mōkapu, Kailua, Koʻolaupoko. Raised in a matriarchy on the windward side of Oʻahu, his work is guided by the multigenerational efforts of queer folk and Native Hawaiian women—especially his mother, aunties, and maternal grandmother—who have devoted their lives to art, culture, education, healing, and community in Hawaiʻi. Photo by Sancia Miala Shiba Nash.
Dominic Leong (Kanaka Maoli) is a founding partner at Leong Leong, a New York-based architecture studio working at the intersections of art and everyday life. He focuses on architecture as an aesthetic, cultural, and ecological practice, collaborating with diverse partners to advance social agendas in the built environment. As an educator, he has held invited appointments at Columbia GSAPP, MIT, The Cooper Union and Yale University. Photo by Jennifer Czyborra.Accessibility & What to Expect
Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a presentation and moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience.
About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s programming space on the third floor of the museum. It is fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the Ground floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
Accommodations: The program will have live CART captioning. If we can provide additional services to support your participation, email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.
Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within two weeks.
Special Thanks
Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum; the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino; the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Generous support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Support is also provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Edward and Helen Hintz; re:arc institute; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
