ACIDO Rocket Finalist
Qaumat: Lights for Inuit Living
Current houses in Inuit Nunangat embody Euro-Canadian ideas of the home, such as permanence, partitions, and compartmentalized living—ideas that contradict traditional Inuit principles and housing models, which consisted of a single, communal living space. Together with a growing population, low incomes, limited access to public housing, and multigenerational households, these types of houses make more than half of all Inuit homes overcrowded. Rather than building entirely new houses that accommodate the evident need for shared space, the goal is to remove unnecessary partitions and give context to the resulting space with light instead of walls or doors.
Qaumat is a configurable lighting system that aims to reduce cultural dissonance in Inuit homes by making them fundamentally sharable. It consists of track lights and flexible felt panels that can be used to direct light or to assemble soft boundaries, allowing users to continuously repurpose a single, shared living space.
About the Designer
Mina Morcos, Carleton University
I’m a designer/storyteller/researcher/experimenter, foolish enough to try what others might scoff at, and wise enough to dimension relative to a datum. I have a passion for the unexpected, and my process involves uncovering intriguing moments through trial and error.