Lateral Office & Infranet Lab

The myth of Canada is often preceded by the unique geography of the Canadian North—a vast, sparsely populated, fragile, and sublime territory. Yet with one of the most dramatically changing climates on Earth and an estimated quarter of the planet’s undiscovered energy resources, this Arctic region has emerged as a site of significant economic and developmental speculation. It is a frontier, again. The region’s unique combination of climate, culture, and geography produce complex infrastructures, settlements, and sociopolitical negotiations.

A wider understanding of an environment that unpredictably oscillates between freeze and thaw, dark and light, accessible and inaccessible, tradition and technology offers a more potent reading of building opportunities. How might building in the North be adaptable, responsive, and temporal? How might new buildings and landscapes in the North fuse existing systems with emergent ones to catalyze a network of ecologies and economies and a new public realm in the Arctic?