A recent presentation at the 2017 World Design Summit in Montreal on landscape architecture research in Canada generated much conversation among scholars, including Associate Professor Alissa North. Entitled "Crosscountry Check-up: A transect of landscape architecture research across Canada," the presentation shared the results of surveys that explored pedagogical approaches in regions throughout the country and the circumstances that brought them about. This work was seen as the "first step in conquering the spatial divide" that exists between schools in Canada and the first step in "addressing links between research, education, and landscape architecture."

Inspired to continue the conversation, North along with colleagues at other schools where landscape architecture is taught applied for and received a grant from the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LCAF) "to address common research questions, and reveal the potential for more informed and collaborative research."

From the LACF website:

The goal is to create a forum for this discussion on landscape architecture research and education in Canada and form the foundation of a research group. With a nationally developed research network, landscape architecture research across the country can advance agendas and, most importantly, assist professionals by critically examining many of the pressing issues currently facing Canadian society and the environment.

Our project plan is to bring research professors together to design a studio that occurs at each of the schools simultaneously.   We anticipate the results will be documentation of what challenges and opportunities there are as a collective.
 

For more information, visit the LACF website.

Image, top, by Shelley Long (MLA 2015), from her MLA thesis Wilderness & Exodus: The Production of National Landscape