A Canadian design project to “stimulate” future Arctic architecture will be the national exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The winners of the Holcim Awards Gold 2011 for North America, Lateral Office, will represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture with Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 - an exhibition the firm has organized and curated.

Lateral Office represented by Lola Sheppard received a Global Holcim Awards Finalist 2012 certificate for the “Regional food-gathering nodes and logistics network” at a sustainable development forum held at the University of Toronto.

The projects that received Holcim Awards Gold, Silver, or Bronze in each of the five regions of the world were automatically qualified to compete for the Global Holcim Awards 2012. The more extensive submission on the Regional food-gathering nodes and logistics network for the global phase of the competition can be found here:

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The winners of the 3rd International Holcim Awards competition for sustainable construction projects and visions from North America have been announced. A total of USD 300,000 was presented to ten diverse and innovative projects from Canada and the USA at a ceremony in Washington, DC. The winning projects show how greater levels of sustainability can be reached in building and construction through people-focused designs that include simple adaptation, innovative materials, and clever architecture.

The jury praised the project for bringing an overlooked issue to the table, and providing a stunning solution with an impressive value-added return on the resources invested. An attentive contextual response is demonstrated in all dimensions of the project, based upon thorough research and the participation of the community. The entire strategy up to the design responds to the landscape, climatic and site conditions, and includes purposeful interventions which are integrated without any grand gestures or expensive structures.

Instead they bridge between the traditions of the Inuit and the expectations of the young generation thereby providing an opportunity to create an improved future. The project is also highly transferable to other arctic regions; and its basis in terms of overall attitude and mood has even broader applicability.

This socio-architectural project to create an Arctic Food Network (AFN) in Canada’s high arctic territory of Nunavut is a model to overcome the dependence of the Inuit community on expensive processed food products imported from the south. These foods have compromised the traditional diet centered on hunting and gathering of food provided by nature across a yearly cycle.