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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.