Project Team
- Levi Esquerra, Senior Vice President, Native American Advancement & Tribal Engagement
- Claudia Nelson, Director, Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office
- Kelly Eitzen Smith, PhD., Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office
- Laura Carr, Co-founder, NPDC, and Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture, College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA)
- David Brubaker, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Architecture, CAPLA
- Greg Veitch, Project Manager, NPDC, and Adjunct Lecturer, School of Architecture, CAPLA
- 2024 BArch 410F studio, School of Architecture, CAPLA
Community Partners
- Andrew Gashwazra, Director, Hopi Office of Community Planning and Economic Development
- Terri Honani, Senior Advisor to Chairman Nuvangyaoma of the Hopi Tribe
- Lee Wayne Lomayestewa, Hopi Cultural Preservation Office
- Susan Sekaquaptewa, University of Arizona's Tribal Extension Program
- LeRoy Shingoitewa, Hopi Tribal Council Representative to Tawaovi
- William Charley, Hopi Tribal Council Representative to Tawaovi
- The Hopi Tribe’s Tawaovi Community Development Team
- Hopi Tribal Council Representatives
- Offices of the Chairman & Vice-Chairman, Hopi Tribe
Project Overview
The Hopi Tribe's Tawaovi Community is a self-sustaining master planned community that utilizes off-grid resource capture, regional building materials, and culturally-appropriate architectural strategies. The attached housing, multifamily housing, and education facility designs incorporate water harvesting, specify locally-harvested and processed mass timber material systems, and utilize Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) components from solar arrays to create a zero-energy system. All three designs are intended to be tied together, creating a MicroGrid that shares energy generation and storage resources. The designs used energy modeling procedures and innovative products in order to meet stringent resource use standards of the US Passive House Institute.
The Hopi Tribe’s Tawaovi Community Development Team, which consists of several Hopi Tribal departments, Hopi Tribal Council Representatives, and the Offices of the Chairman & Vice-Chairman, collaborated with CAPLA faculty Laura Carr and David Brubaker and fourth-year Bachelors of Architecture students.
According to architecture faculty David Brubaker, "the project’s overarching theme was the Hopi people’s long tradition of sustainability, which is required to survive in their dry climate. Their history of dry farming and land use influenced all our designs. We also took inspiration from their traditional buildings and combined those forms with the latest building science techniques.”
In January 2024, CAPLA students and faculty visited Hopi. They went on site visits to Tawaovi and received presentations from the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office and local Hopi community members on the culture, history, and traditional structures of Hopi homes and family dynamics. The students respectfully and beautifully incorporated all they learned from Hopi into their three architectural designs.
“The Hopi Tribe values our collaboration with the University of Arizona and the many different spectrums including our collaboration with the UA CAPLA program” said Hopi Chairman Nuvangyaoma. “This was an amazing opportunity for the students to create a real-time architectural design, which won a first place award, and a design that incorporated Hopi architecture. A big KWA’KWAH to the UA CAPLA students and the University of Arizona.”
The students’ unique and award-winning architecture designs are gifted to the Tawaovi Community Development Team to utilize in their future design plans. These designs will help to provide solar passive housing and a micro campus for the Hopi Tribe. The continued partnership and collaboration with the University of Arizona is a win-win for everyone.
Project Videos