Post on 04-Jun-2018
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LS We should put it in context and say that its part of a suite of projects
that has been ongoing now for three years. We have been looking at the role of
infrastructures and networks in the north, how there are some cultural resources
that might be shared among the pioneers and rst communities.Knowledge
Cloudscame out of an observation that Canada, as a circumpolar nation, is the
only nation that doesnt have a university in its north. The reasons for that are
multiple: partly political, but largely there isnt the population to sustain one or
more permanent campuses in the north and so the project began as a question of
Could one rethink the university in the context of geography, climate, and because
of the meeting of many very different and unique cultures?
MS What is interesting about the Canadian North is that you have a lot of
different stakeholders that are bringing knowledge and trying to gain knowledge
for different reasons observation, scientic knowledge along the lines of
development, and resource extraction. Part of Knowledge Cloudsis the ability for
all of these different stakeholders of knowledge to have some kind of platform
or infrastructure, to nd common ground and collaborate. By having a moving
campus or moving faculties in temporary locations, you are able to collaborate
with these different stakeholders at different times; these meeting grounds
become sites for the cross-pollination of knowledge.
LS Part of the project started to be about imagining new forms of academic
curriculum that would be a hybrid of academic knowledge and on the ground
knowledge: knowledge that comes from either the Inuit or from researchers
measuring the ice or observing mammals. So, in effect, theres a curriculum itself
that would bring together different modes of learning.
How did Knowledge Clouds
come about?
ACONVERSATIONWITH:
LATERAL OFFICEMASON WHITE
LOLA SHEPPARD
MATTHEW SPREMULLI
LATERAL OFFICE
Right: Photograph of campus cluster
with animated model showing the
changes in environmental conditions:
the movement of wind, the
accumulation of snow, the freezing
and thawing of ice.
Photo by Jesse C. Jackson
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LS This idea of network, architecture and infrastructure working at a territorial
scale underpins many of our projects. The network for infrastructure can respond
and react to programmatic demands, climatic conditions or demands of its users.
MW We have a real interest in where the site of a project begins or ends. I think
thats a genuine question for the studio; theres something very simplistic about
that question that it almost sounds as if it is at the very foundation of design
questions to ask. We are humbled by the fact that landscape architects take an
interest in our work, as were all trained as architects, but the overlapping interest
in landscape architecture and the respect we have for the discipline has come out
of this general initial investigation of h. The Knowledge Cloudsproject embodiesthat powerfully because it has site-specicity in the enclosure of the structure.
These labs or classrooms can be adjusted to be site-specic; also, the site could
be described as predominantly a route of travel from a departure to a destination,
including the various regional campuses themselves.
LS - Another thing that has interested us is the idea that a structure or
intervention might have an impact beyond its immediate context. You can operate
at a territorial scale without necessarily building bigger or more. Through these
kinds of networks, physical or ephemeral, quite small interventions can start to
engage and transform how a much larger territory operates.
How might this insight into the Arctic
inform other projects in your practice that
are not related at all to the Arctic, like
parks and urban infrastructure?
CONVERSATION:
MW - There is an aboriginal culture and innumerable cultural anthropologists
and environmental scientists, as well, occupying this remote landscape. The fact
is, you have these powerful contradictions of extreme science, people at the top
of their elds, studying ice ows, sea mammals and all kinds of patterns. And
then there are people who have occupied that land for thousands of years. So
theres this powerful friction, but a friction we were hoping to try to excite and
nd synergies between. The idea of local knowledge and the idea of a gathered
database of knowledge I think there is a likeness between these two that has
been overlooked.
MS There are so many people bringing different agendas. It makes sense that
there is a local knowledge base and a degree knowledge base that is from the
north and for the north. Its something that a lot of other northern-polar countries
do for similar reasons. The powers of local knowledge are a way to balance new
interest and knowledge coming in with speculation for the future.
There are so many other places that you
could intervene, why was it so import to
have a degree-granting institute in the
north?
MW - This idea of aggregating and disaggregating a form of practice that relates to
dynamism or, more broadly, the ability for the design to adapt and respond to change
it might be pragmatic, environmental or weather-based responses. Aggregating and
disaggregating is an alternate approach to planning, whereby planning has specically
been an idea of nite or xed designs. Were interested in design systems and elements
that can be combined in various ways to provide a general strategy; this plan can then
become malleable and adaptable. But I think the terms disaggregateand aggregateare
really acknowledging an alternate practice, a planning-based practice.
LS - Because were interested in this large scale, I would argue that one needs to start tothink about something that can transform and respond or even risk megalomania. If you
operate at a huge scale, either youre building massive things and I can see failed projects
in that realm or you nd an alternate way of thinking about how you can engage. The
territory of the whole northern Arctic in the case of Knowledge Cloudsmeans you need
alternate tools to engage and respond to sites of that scale.
MW - Were ten years old as a studio. Our ambition for the studio, which was never
named after our identities, was to embrace a kind of at and horizontal form of practice.
The studio wasnt about individual identities. I think that the innovations have come
out of the initial impressions that were there from the very beginning of ititiating a
design collaboration in that wonderfully awkward, nave way. Were now working under
a more structured practice that was really critical . Its like looking back at an awkward
nger-painting and discovering an idea in them that youre still not nished with. I think
consistency comes out of recognising those foundational questions, and innovation
comes during improvement upon articulating a response to a question. Innovation isnt
change for the sake of change; rather, its understanding the question being asked in a
more profound way.
MS - When youre confronted with issues of program, like specics of site and climate,
it forces you to adapt, and thats where a lot of our innovations come from. Were very
exible, very plastic.
LS - All of our projects start with a lot of research, and part of this research is dened by
accidents and loopholes or the places where the system either doesnt work or where
theres actually opportunity within the system thats overlooked.
In the interview for Landscape
Futures, you speak about
designs that can aggregate and
disaggregate as necessary, that
these sorts of designs that can
shift across scales. How did you
determine that this was the most
appropriate approach?
We were wondering how you
balance a consistency of practice
in which theres an expectation of
what you are going to do and what
is going to be produced.
LATERAL OFFICEUNCHARTERED TERRITORIES
Below: View of classroom unit
being air-lifted to site, to form
a cluster of teaching classrooms,
marking a temporary campus. The
deployable, mobile university
capitalises on the technology of
airships to airlift equipment for
the northern mines.
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MS Our projects are posing questions in their most honest way. Through projects
and research, were asking much larger questions like How do we interface with
our environment? This is what were exploring within our work. Its less about
this is how we should interpret things for our environment, but more about the
new potentials if we expand our scope of design what new horizons maybe
this draws back to your question of new territories. We are actively seeking these
overlaps of things that may be left behind in a kind of systemic research. Were
looking for interesting experiential researchbased overlaps thatproduce new territories.
LS - From the start, we have been interested in working in these territories that
have been overlooked by design professions. There is a freedom to say that no-
one really knows what to do in this context, so we could almost say the rules of
engagement are still being written and thats a powerful place to be operating.
MW In a way, there is a form of detective work being done in the design-research
work in the Canadian North. Another interesting idea that weve been drawing from
lately is that the designer is also one part detective, one part scientist.
LS One thing we are very conscious of recognising is when a problem has
a spatial or architectural implication or when its really an issue of policy or
legislation. If we take the projectCaribou Pivot Station, an early observation was
that certain caribou species were disappearing for assorted reasons. Some of the
responses might be, well, you need to change the policy or you need to change
the environmental pollution happening in those regions, and those are, of course,
outside the scope of architecture. What were interested in is this role of detective,extending the role of architects and how we might pre-empt the project rather
than come in at the tail end, which is the traditional model.
When you describe the Arctic, you
reference it as this idea of a new frontier.
How do you identify these new territories?
MW - Design competitions were a really fruitful early investigation for the studio. They
were useful for their deadlines, but then, broadly speaking, they t under the categories of
design in the public realm and design related to infrastructure. Responding to those terms
more directly is what matters. The glory of trying to actually win the competition was
a false hope so we gave up. I think there would be some the Reykjavik urdban design
project was one in which we were shortlisted from a very large group, and we were able
to move forward and develop a second phase and that was a valuable operation. But I
think, lately, weve found it more fruitful to generate our own work. The downside is thatthere is no deadline to it.
How do you set about nding your
work? Do you follow your heart
and nd someone who will pay
you for it, or do you nd a brief and
then turn it into something that
you are interested in?
MW - About ve years ago, there was this interesting envy happening within the design
disciplines of other disciplines. Lets say, architecture wanted to be more landscape-y,
landscape seemed to want to be more urban design-ey, and urban design wanted to
be more architectural. Also there was a openness by which the term architect was
being ascribed to many different kinds of people. In very a popular medium such as the
newspaper, an economist would be called the architect of the Euro or something to that
effect. In North America, you can be sued if you call yourself an architect without actually
carrying that licence. This brought up the possibility that there was this internal feeding
happening within the various disciplines. I was trying to write about this as a useful thing
rather than a problem, but that it is a really truthful opening up or acknowledging of the
possibility of the role of an architect.
Through the diagrams, I was trying to locate the term infrastructure. It seemed like a tug
of war between urban design and landscape and, in some ways, architecture. Of course,
being an architect, I was hoping to lay claim to the territory of infrastructure, that an
architect did have a stake within infrastructure and its design investigation.
LS I think, across those camps mentioned by Mason, there will be a shift, but I think it
will be very slow. For architects, maybe the role and the sites where architects intervene
I dont know to what degree this is wishful thinking and to what degree I fully believe
this will happen I think theres a kind of generation of young architects being trained in
school that are asking some really good questions. My profound hope is that they bring
this curiosity and willingness to engage in issues that are challenging, in terms of scale
and complexity. We havent been teaching for enough decades to have a sense of how
different that is from ten or twenty years ago, but I remain optimistic that there will be a
shift in the bulk of things that architects tackle. I sort of think we have no choice.
Mason, we came across your
article Disciplinary Thievery
and it reminded us of when
we were trying to get a spatial
understanding of the discipline of
landscape architecture. Can you
explain the diagrams you used to
locate disciplines?
Lola and Matthew, did you have
something that you wanted to add,
leading on from the last question?
How might design continue on
its current trajectory do you
envisage a grand shift?
Previous page: View of classroom
cluster showing units raised to
provide protected entry and offer
space for equipment storage.
Above: Map of proposed mobile
Arctic University network showing
classrooms moving in response
to community needs, as well as
curricular opportunities to pursue
studies in the feld.
Opposite page: Section of
classroom showing integration
of local and imported
building technologies.