Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. It assembles a multi-layered, empirical description of urbanization processes within the drainage basins of the five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. This thick description encompasses a range of representational forms including maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, and photographs, as well as speculative design research projects and critical texts. Postponing diagnosis, let alone treatment of these conditions, Third Coast Atlas aspires to simply describe. It proposes a new geographic gestalt for urban analysis. Superimposed upon the North American continent, and with easily recognizable yet divergent political and geological borders, this megaregion traverses portions of eight US states and two Canadian provinces, as well as the world’s largest collection of surficial fresh water. Third Coast Atlas characterizes the littoral edge as a distinct field of urbanization, and constructs a reading of the region both specific and speculative.

Daniel Ibañez is a practicing architect and urbanist. He is a doctor of design candidate and teaching fellow at Harvard University. His research critically examines design disciplines in relation to broader socioecological interdependencies through cross-disciplinary research on the field of urban metabolism. He has organized the conferences Projective Views on Urban Metabolism (Harvard GSD, 2014) and Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial (Harvard GSD, 2014). He is on the editorial board of New Geographies, coeditor-in-chief of New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism (HUP, 2014), and coeditor of Thermodynamics Applied to High-Rise and Mix-Use Prototypes (Harvard, 2013). His grants for academic research include a Fundación La Caixa Fulbright Fellowship, a Real Colegio Complutense Scholarship, and the Harvard GSD’s Dimitris Pikionis Award and Penny White Research Scholarship. Since 2003, he has served as codirector of the design firm Margen-Lab. At Harvard, he is research manager at the GSD’s Urban Theory Lab.

Clare Lyster is an architect, writer, and educator based in Chicago, whose work focuses on the design of space at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure. Her current research focuses on urban systems, the subject of her upcoming book, Learning from Logistics (Birkhauser 2015). She is editor of Envisioning the Bloomingdale: 5 Concepts (Chicago Architecture Club, 2009) and coeditor of 306090 9: Regarding Public Space, with Cecilia Benites (PA Press, August 2005). Her writing has appeared in the Architects Newspaper, Cabinet, Chicago Architect, the Journal of Landscape Architecture, the Journal of Architectural Education, MONU, Places, and as chapters in edited anthologies on landscape and mobility networks. Her design work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including at the Art Institute of Chicago and University College, Dublin. She is associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has also taught at Syracuse University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University.

Charles Waldheim is a Canadian-American architect, urban theorist, and educator. Waldheim's research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is author, editor, or coeditor of numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is the John E. Irving Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has lectured internationally and has taught at Rice University, the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan. Waldheim is a recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Cullinan Chair at Rice University; and the Sanders Fellowship from the University of Michigan.

Mason White is founding partner of Lateral Office, a director of the research platform InfraNet Lab, and associate professor at the University of Toronto. His design work and research has received numerous awards and international recognition in publications and exhibitions. White is coeditor of the first issue of Bracket [on farming], (Actar, 2010), Bracket 4 [takes action] (Actar, 2015), and is coauthor of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). His work has been published in Young Architects: Situating (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), Canadian Architect, Landscape Architecture, Architect, Praxis, and Architectural Record. His writing has been published in Alphabet City: Fuel (MIT Press, 2008), Ourtopias (Riverside Press, 2008), New Geographies, MONU, A+U, and 306090. He has lectured and exhibited work internationally. White previously taught at Cornell and the Ohio State University, and has been an invited critic at schools internationally. Recently, he represented Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture with Arctic Adaptations, which was awarded a Special Mention.