Kelty Miyoshi McKinnon, BES University of Manitoba 1993 and MLA University of Minnesota 1997, is a Landscape Architect and Partner at PFS Studio. With over 25 years of professional experience, Kelty has developed an award-winning portfolio of work merging landscape architecture, urban design, art and ecology. Specializing in projects dealing with the public realm and systems thinking, she is committed to the creation of unique, innovative and meaningful public spaces that merge cultural, social, and environmental ecologies.
Kelty worked in Albuquerque, Aspen, Denver, Minneapolis and Portland before returning to her home province of British Columbia and (finally!) settling down at PFS Studio in Vancouver. She is known for her collaborative, community-based approach to design that involves listening, research, and interactive dialogue to distill a project’s vision. She is a passionate advocate for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, and leverages design to centre that which has been peripheralized. Kelty is currently working on the Japanese Canadian Monument Park in Victoria and the Chinatown Memorial Plaza in Victoria.
Over the course of her career, Kelty has directed many of the firm’s more complex and high-profile projects in British Columbia, Ontario, Washington and Oregon. She is currently leading the landscape component of the ʔəy̓alməxʷ/Iy̓álmexw/Jericho Lands in Vancouver, a 90 acre post military site being redeveloped into a high density Indigifuturist TOD (transit oriented development); as well as leading the Imagine West End Waterfront Vision Plan- a 30 year plan for land-based approaches to climate adaptation and sea level rise in downtown Vancouver.
Kelty has been dedicated to working with students throughout her career, as an Adjunct Professor at UBC and frequent design juror and thesis committee member. She has also written extensively and broadly about landscape related phenomena- from sugar production and cultural landscapes, to hefted sheep, genetic mutation and urban bestiaries.
