GSD Talks: Clare Lyster and Mason White

Clare Lyster and Mason White join Charles Waldheim, Daniel Ibañez, and others to discuss the recently released volume, Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan.

Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan (Ibañez, Lyster, Waldheim, and White, eds.) describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. It assembles a multi-layered, empirical description of urbanization processes within the drainage basins of the five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. This thick description encompasses a range of representational forms including maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, and photographs, as well as speculative design research projects and critical texts. Postponing diagnosis, let alone treatment of these conditions, Third Coast Atlas aspires to simply describe. It proposes a new geographic gestalt for urban analysis. Superimposed upon the North American continent, and with easily recognizable yet divergent political and geological borders, this megaregion traverses portions of eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, as well as the world’s largest collection of surficial fresh water. Third Coast Atlas characterizes the littoral edge as a distinct field of urbanization, and constructs a reading of the region both specific and speculative.

In this event, Lyster and White will present a brief lecture, followed by a panel discussion with Pierre Bélanger, Rosetta Elkin, Daniel Ibañez, and Rania Ghosn. Charles Waldheim will host and moderate the discussion.

Clare Lyster is an Irish architect, educator, and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. Lyster is associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture. She is principal of CLUAA, a research-based design office in Chicago operating at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and planning. In addition to her design practice, Lyster writes about architecture and urbanism from the perspective of contemporary theories in landscape, infrastructure, and globalization. Lyster is author of Learning from Logistics: How Networks Inform Cities (Birkhauser, 2015) and her essays have appeared in Cabinet, Chicago Architect, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Landscape Architecture, MONU, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Places.

Mason White is a Canadian-American architect and urbanist based in Toronto, Ontario. White is founding partner of Lateral Office, a Toronto-based experimental design practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. In addition to his practice, White is associate professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He is recipient of the Emerging Voices and Young Architects Prize from the Architectural League of New York; the Wheelwright Fellowship from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; the Friedman Visiting Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley; and the Lefevre Fellowship at The Ohio State University. White is co-editor of Bracket, vol. 1 and co-editor of Pamphlet Architecture, no. 30: Coupling—Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism.