Katharine Logan

What is the purpose of the Great Lakes? Some 40 years ago, that was a question on my oral test for Canadian citizenship. I drew a blank. How can lakes have purpose? Surely they just are. Taking pity, the examiner leaned forward and murmured the answer she was looking for: “Transportation.” Over the span of the industrial age, use had become purpose—to the point where a country expected its new citizens to know that.

ProjectsBuildings by TypeCivic ArchitecturePark & Public Space Design Concrete embrasures cut through landscaped berms at the entry of the Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre in Edmonton, Canada. A velodrome, with cyclists streaming around a precision-engineered banked track at top speeds of over 50 miles an hour, is one of the most technically demanding facilities to design in the world of sport. It’s also inherently insular: a closed loop that cannot be crossed.

Climate Change & SustainabilityArchitectural TechnologyArchitect Continuing Education Whitman-Walker Max Robinson Center Architect: Perkins&Will At this health-care and research center in Washington, D.C., materials such as PVC-free flooring without antimicrobials support optimized indoor air quality. For the first two decades of efforts to select more benign building materials, the challenge centered on a lack of information.