Over the past 13 years, our work has taken us to places as far away as Alaska and China, Venice and Valencia, and North Devon and Fforest Fawr.
We have represented Scotland at international events and exhibitions and collaborated with people from across the world and diverse backgrounds.
During COP26 we welcomed people to our home city of Glasgow and partnered with significant institutions such as LEGO, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Pecha Kucha.
However, at the heart of our diverse work has been three core elements that have helped shape how we deliver projects alongside communities, organisations and institutions.
People. Place. Possibility.
People
We don’t ever deliver a project in isolation.
Over the last decade, we have worked alongside communities, historians, architects, engineers, fabricators, artists, young people and cultural organisations to understand their ideas and co-create projects that reflect shared knowledge and lived experience.
Working alongside people ensures that the stories we tell are layered, inclusive and grounded in real experience. It also means that projects continue to evolve beyond their completion, shaped by those who use and inhabit them.
Design, for us, is as much about conversations with people as it is about delivery.
Place
Every project we have been involved in starts with us understanding the context of place: What influence has the landscape, culture, heritage or language of this place had on the story we are to tell?
Often this begins with on-site and in-person research: walking the site, listening to local stories and understanding how people use a space.
Whether working within industrial heritage landscapes, coastal communities or urban centres, we consider how design can amplify what is already distinctive about a place.
By designing with place in mind, we avoid generic solutions, instead actively involving voices of culture, nature or heritage in the process.
Possibility
Alongside people and place sits possibility – the opportunity to imagine what a place could become.
From Prospect North in Venice and Future Pausley to immersive digital installations and augmented landscapes, we have consistently explored how physical and digital storytelling can work together. Emerging technologies are not used for their own sake, but as tools to deepen engagement and expand access.
In a time of climate change and global pattern change, design also becomes a way to explore futures. Through exhibition, masterplanning and strategic research (such as our atlases of Scotland), we have asked how creativity can help places adapt, respond and thrive.
Possibility is about looking forward while remaining rooted in the stories of people and place – imagining sustainable futures that are culturally and environmentally grounded.
When people, place and possibility align, projects move beyond interpretation – they become catalysts for conversation, learning and change.
The projects we have delivered over the past decade are not endpoints. They are starting points for ongoing discussions about identity, resilience and the future of our landscapes and communities.
In our next Lateral Story, we’ll explore the principles and processes that underpin how we deliver this work – and how they continue to shape the direction of Lateral North.
We would love to hear from you if there has been a particular project of ours that you have loved – or one you would like to know more about?
