Mason White

Biography

Associate Professor Mason White’s work and research privileges architecture as a mutable territory that is formed out of and responsive to its environment and history. His work, research and teaching invites readings of Architecture as a byproduct of complex networks within ecology and culture. Recent research pursues questions of the role of infrastructure and networks within contemporary spatial practice. His design research exists at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. It is often situated within sites where the systems and codes that determine these environments must be uncovered and rethought. White founded Lateral Office in 2003 in partnership with Lola Sheppard. He is also a founding Director of InfraNet Lab, an exploratory initiative launched in 2008, where he is an editor of the journal Bracket: Architecture, Environment, Digital Culture. Lateral Office has received numerous awards and recognition, including: the 2012 Arctic Inspiration Prize; the 2011 Gold Award, North America from the Holcim Foundation; the 2011 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York; the 2010 Professional Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts; and the 2005 Young Architects Prize from the Architectural League of New York. Lateral Office is the recipient of three separate Faculty Design Awards from the ACSA. Prof. White is the 2012-13 Howard Friedman Professor at UC Berkeley; the 2008-09 Arthur W Wheelwright Fellow from Harvard Graduate School of Design; and the 2003-04 Lefevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at Ohio State University. Lateral Office has won or been shortlisted for competitions internationally, including: For A Resilient Rockaway (2013), Klaksvik City Centre (2012), Drylands Design (2012), Cleveland Design Competition (2011), WPA 2.0 (2009), Vatnsmyri Masterplan, Reykjavik (2007), Orphan Spaces (2006), Metis Garden (2005), Memphis Riverfront (2003). White is co-editor of the first issue of Bracket 1 [on farming], (Actar, 2010), and a co-author of Pamphlet Architecture #30: Ccoupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). His work has been published in Young Architects: Situating (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), Canadian Architect, Landscape Architecture, C3, Architect, Praxis, and Architectural Record. His writing has been published in Alphabet City: Fuel (MIT Press, 2008), Ourtopias (Riverside Press, 2008), New Geographies, MONU, A+U, and 306090. He has lectured and exhibited work internationally including Canada, US, Germany, Iceland, and England. Prof. White previously taught at Cornell (2004-05) and Ohio State University (2003-04), and has been an invited critic at schools internationally. White’s recent research and design work has focused on public infrastructures in northern climates. White has conducted and presented research in all of the circumpolar countries – Russia (2008), northern Canada (2010-2013), Iceland (2010, 2012), Norway (2011), Greenland (2012), and recently Alaska (2012-13). In particular, White has developed a growing record of inter-disciplinary work pursued in collaboration with partners, embodied in 4 important current projects. Photo credits: (1) Arctic Food Network; (2) Transforming Primary Health Care in Remote Northern Communities working with Qaujigiartiit Health Research Centre (AHRN-NU) and Dr. Kue Young (Alberta) funded by CIHR; (3) Adaptive Arctic Possibilities, design-research on community relocation in Alaska due to climate change; (4) Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15, an international exhibition that looks at the role of architecture in Nunavut.

Research Interest

His work, research and teaching invites readings of Architecture as a byproduct of complex networks within ecology and culture. Recent research pursues questions of the role of infrastructure and networks within contemporary spatial practice. His design research exists at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. It is often situated within sites where the systems and codes that determine these environments must be uncovered and rethought.