Client: Diné College

Location: Tsaile, AZ

Size: 8,681 SF

The Diné College Archival Center, located on the main campus at Tsaile, was intended to provide dual functions. The first is to welcome faculty, students, and visitors to use the public spaces for classrooms, conferences and small gatherings. This outreach function allows the college to maintain cultural ties to the community and opens the opportunity for increased awareness of traditional Navajo learning.

The second use is for storage, processing and archiving of Diné cultural and historic artifacts, documents, and history, with the security, storage and preservation of artifacts being the primary concern. This function also represents a “repatriation” of sorts for important cultural artifacts being transferred from outside agencies to the Navajo Nation.

An open work room combines multiple functions for careful documenting, sorting, inspecting, and digitizing historical objects. Adjacent to the work room are separate storage rooms to house special book collections, film, pottery, textiles, and paintings. A media center is also being proposed, allowing visitors or staff to experience Diné culture via media arts such as recordings or video.

Key Staff
Dyron Murphy
Nitish Suvarna
Daniel Feldbusch