Synergy Session: "Design and Architecture as a Catalyst in Outports"
Friday, October 16, 2015, 12:00 pm -1:30 pm
Suncor EnergyFluvarium, 5 Nagle's Place, St. John's NL
Free admission and lunch will be served.
"Design and Architecture as a Catalyst in Outports"
Presented by Mason White
Visiting Associate Professor, Harvard University
Associate Professor, University of Toronto
With the depopulation of rural regions due to the cod moratorium, many outports are struggling to remain sustainable. Tourism and culture will provide an economic alternative to the fishery for some communities. What role can design and architecture have as catalysts for social and economic regeneration? This session will explore the challenges and opportunities in the seemingly opposing pressures of heritage preservation and development in Newfoundland outports. The session coincides with field research being conducted by a group of 14 architecture students from Harvard University led by Mason White. The group is studying three outports -- Harbour Grace, Port Union and Twillingate -- as examples of these opportunities and challenges. They will be spending the next nine weeks developing design proposals.
Mason White is an award-winning architect and academic based in Toronto. He is a founding partner of the design practice Lateral Office, which represented Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture. White is co-author of “Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism” (2010), and the forthcoming book "Many Norths: Spatial Practice in Polar Territory" (2015).