Meet Lola Sheppard, Professor and Graduate Officer, whose research exists at the intersection of Architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Much of her recent work and teaching has focused on the role of architecture relationship to extreme environments, with a particular focus on the unique and challenging context of Arctic Canada.
Lola has lectured and exhibited work across Canada, the US, and Europe. She has participated in the Venice Biennale (2021, 2014), the Seoul Biennale (2017) and the Chicago Biennale (2015). She has been an invited critic at the Universities of Harvard, Pennsylvania, Yale, Virginia, Michigan, RISD, Toronto, McGill, among many others.
Lola founded Lateral Office in 2003 in partnership with Mason White, whichhas received national and international recognition for innovative design work and research. Please visit Lateral Office for a complete list of projects, events publications and recognition.
Lola has led 6 option studios with Waterloo studio, travelling to northern Canada and rural Newfoundland.
Lola & Lateral Office featured in the media:
Impulse in The New York Times
Making Camp in ArchDaily
Arctic Adaptation in designboom
Students in a 2019 Option Studio looking at Education in Iqaluit and Kuujjuaq
Students in a 2019 Option Studio looking at Education in Iqaluit and Kuujjuaq
Option Studio looking at Education in Greenland, 2012
image of Lola Sheppard
Arctic Adaptations: Three of twenty-five Corian models of Nunavut communities, showing all buildings and roads, the airstrip, rivers and coastline. Photo: Latreille Delage Photography.
View of display tables with animated, ‘living’ models illustrating each proposal at three scales: the territorial, community and architectural scale. Photo: Latreille Delage Photography.
Making Camp: Model showing 5 campsite proposals integrated into a gradient landscape. Closed Loop project in foreground; Suspend project in background right, and Lookout project in background left. Photograph by Tom Harris © Hedrich Blessing.
The Closed Loop campsite integrates the ambitions of the low foot-print camper.
Making Camp: The Lookout campsite is a vertical stack of radiating camp grounds.
