Mason White: Architecture, Environment, Action

Mason White is a founding Partner at LATERAL OFFICE and an Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech and his Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has taught at Harvard University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, and UC Berkeley. White previously worked at Moncaelli Press (New York), Machado Silvetti Associates (Boston), and Panter Hudspith (London) before forming LATERAL OFFICE. He is convinced that there are new roles for architecture that have yet to be explored because we are not really looking. White is the recipient of the 2008-09 Arthur Wheelwright Fellowship from Harvard Graduate School of Design and the 2012-13 Howard Friedman Visiting Professorship in the Practice of Architecture at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.

LATERAL OFFICE, founded in 2003 by Mason White and Lola Sheppard, is an experimental design practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. The studio describes its practice process as a commitment to “design as a research vehicle to pose and respond to complex, urgent questions in the built environment,” engaging in the “wider context and climate of a project– social, ecological, or political.” LATERAL OFFICE has been recognized with several awards and merits including: a 2016 National Urban Design Award; a 2013 Progressive Architecture Award; a 2011 Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction Gold Award; a 2011 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York; and the 2010 Canada Council for the Arts Professional Prix de Rome. The firm was selected to represent Canada with "Arctic Adaptations" at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture, where they received Special Mention - a first for Canada at the Architecture Biennale. And, in 2015, the firm was the only Canadian participant at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.