A collaborative multi-generational housing development in Simpcw First Nation is combining traditional ways of living with sustainable building practices to address a local housing shortage.
Traditionally, members of Simpcw First Nation lived all along the Thompson River in what is now British Columbia’s interior. Multiple families often lived together in one pit home—a traditional dwelling built into the ground.
The community today, looks very different with roughly 700 Simpcw members living outside the First Nation’s much smaller, post-colonial territory. Chu Chua is the main village in Simpcw, an area with steep slopes and prone to flooding.
“We knew we desperately needed housing. We haven’t built new housing in the community in a number of years. Our rental waitlist was exceedingly long,” said Emily Proskiw, the project lead for Simpcw First Nation’s new energy-efficient housing development.
“We can’t keep developing the way we have in the past. I think lot of communities are in the same boat,” Proskiw said in the documentary, Coming Home, about the project.
The community worked with Paradigm Building Solutions, which specializes in manufacturing high-quality, energy-efficient buildings and materials, to build 15 affordable and family-friendly triplex units in Chu Chua.
For Paradigm CEO and Athabasca University alum Philipp Gruner (Master of Business Administration ’17), partnering with Simpcw on the not-for-profit project made sense on many levels.
“Our facility is built in the Traditional Lands of Simpcw First Nation [in Barriere, B.C.], so it was really nice and unique to bring housing to that community,” said Gruner. “I just really liked the fact that we can bring a product into Indigenous communities that isn't a short-term solution, but a long-term solution.”
Community connections and collaboration
Gruner’s team at Paradigm Building Solutions collaborated with the community to develop the best solutions for Chu Chua’s needs. They worked together to access federal funding, while staff at Paradigm invested time to learn about local traditions and culture, incorporating elements into the design and building process.
The result is a series of high-quality multi-generational housing units that embrace traditional ways of living. The outside units of each triplex include three bedrooms, meant for families with children, while middle units have two bedrooms—and are accessible to accommodate the needs of Elders, allowing Traditional Knowledge to be passed down to younger generations.
Each triplex includes a large timber entryway and traditional colours to represent the region’s traditional pit homes. The five triplexes are oriented in a horseshoe shape that aims to foster community, connection, and social exchange.
“The way this was designed was to bring the community together, so we don’t have buildings back into each other. Everything is open. You’re open to a central location where people can get together and socialize,” Andre Taniguti, director of finance and operations manager at Simpcw First Nation, told the documentary filmmakers.
The development not only fills an urgent need for housing in the community, but locals hope that it will also give the area an important economic boost. Simpcw Fist Nation’s economic development arm, Simpcw Resources Group, specializes in civil works and needed more employees. To attract new workers, housing was essential.
“This was a big, 15-unit project that took care of 15 of our families that want to move back. The impact is life-changing,” Kúkwpi7 (Chief) George Lampreau said in Coming Home.
MBA grad at home at Paradigm Building Solutions
For Philipp Gruner, working with Simpcw First Nation allowed him to focus on the type of projects that drew him to the sustainable building sector in the first place. After years of working for hotels the hospitality sector, including stints living in Europe, he returned to Canada and started working in speciality lodges in B.C.’s energy sector.
At one point in his career, Gruner was responsible for 18,000 rooms and 3,000 employees and was often involved in multi-million-dollar contracts.
Learnings from the different classes still apply today. It absolutely helps your career move forward.
This progression steered him toward more of a business focus, prompting him to pursue his MBA. Due his heavy work travel schedule at the time, only AU gave him the flexibility he needed to pursue a degree remotely.
Gruner joined Paradigm as CEO in February 2023 and embraced the opportunity to work for a company with a progressive vision from sustainability in product design to meeting local needs such as employment. The company has seen strong growth ever since, quadrupling the number of employees and diversifying its operations to include manufacturing, construction, solar, and real estate development.
Working on complex projects like the inter-generational housing development in Chu Chua allows him to apply learnings from AU to the real world.
“Learnings from the different classes still apply today. It absolutely helps your career move forward.”
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