Since the 2020 CSLA-AALA Congress scheduled in June was cancelled, the CSLA and AALA are pleased to be able to deliver some of the planned content for the 2020 Congress virtually in this webinar series.
All of the webinars in this series are free to attend.
Upcoming Events
February 11, 2021, 2:30 pm EST - Virginia Burt and Sue Sirrs
Creating Moments in Time: Adding meaning and depth to everyday practice.
Register here
March 11, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT - Jonathan Cha
Towards a Model of Planning and Management of Large Urban Parks
Register here
April 8, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT - Enrica Dall'Ara
Landscape in Motion: Interdisciplinary Methodology to Inform Design Processes
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May 13, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT - Ryan Coates
Region 40: A National Park for the Anthropocene Epoch
Register here
Past Webinars
Time and Reality: A Garden for Adults with Autism - Virignia Burt, co-presenting with Emily Thorpe
December 16, 2020, 2:30 pm EST
The Garden of the Provinces and the Territories: Almost 60 Years Along and Still Relevant - Presented by John Zvonar
January 14, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT
Upcoming Webinars
Creating Moments in Time: Adding Meaning and Depth to Everyday Practice - Presented by Virginia Burt and Sue Sirrs
February 11, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT
As Edward O. Wilson states, “Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.” Urbanization continues to increase worldwide and by 2050, 68% of the population is projected to live in an urban environment – every inch of our living and working spaces need access to genuine interaction with Nature. What many Landscape Architects inherently understand is supported by recent research and technology advances in multiple fields including neuroscience, play research, environmental psychology and psychiatry. In fact, the available knowledge of the brain and mind provides plausible hypotheses and emotional responses associated with certain types of spaces.
Evidence-based design is crucial and showing up at our best is needed to face the challenges and explore opportunities as scientific discovery stretches our work. The solutions need space and time, for us to mindfully consider our role and connect with clients, stakeholders, each other. Layers of research and methodologies will be investigated. Key design strategies, personal development methods, and lessons learned will be explored – providing inspiration for people and spaces that embody and celebrate meaningful engagement.
Towards a Model of Planning and Management of Large Urban Parks - Presented by Jonathan Cha
March 11, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT
The management of large urban parks is a subject little studied in the scientific literature in landscape architecture and urban studies. Cranz (1992) [1982] in The politics of park design analyzed influential actors and park funding, Greenhalgh and Worpole (1996) discussed good practices in urban parks, Tate and Eaton in Great City Parks (2015) [ 2001] put forward Managing Organization, Management Principles and Funding of the Finest Achievements Around the World, while Jansson and Vogel (2018) focused on the concept and practice of urban space management influenced by governance arrangements for participatory co-development.
The conference will look at a case study to highlight the approach underlying the master plan for the conservation, design and development of Parc Jean-Drapeau, a 268-hectare urban park in the heart of Montreal. It will address the methodology developed to review governance, the consultation process, the production of knowledge, the activation of heritage recognition processes, the collaboration with stakeholders, the development of a network and expertise at the national and international levels and the mechanisms for implementing and monitoring the master plan. The process of strategic planning gives greater importance to the history of occupation and designed landscapes, to current realities and visions of the future that includes a desire to make human experience, reconciliation, sustainable development, ecological resilience and conservation guiding principles to rethink the shape and role of large urban parks in today's and tomorrow's society.
Landscape in Motion: Interdisciplinary Methodology to Inform Design Processes - Presented by Enrica Dall'Ara
April 8, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT
This presentation will focus on urban design processes and their acknowledgement of and sensitivity to local identities as temporal products. Pairing an artistic and phenomenological sensibility with in-depth landscape analysis, the presentation addresses a current project, Landscape in Motion - developed by Enrica Dall’Ara and site choreographer Melanie Kloetzel - which aims to transform design approaches employed in urban renewal projects. Through this project, we examine urban landscapes using both spatial data (mapping) and experiential activities (site-specific physical and aural performance methods), in order to develop specific creative outputs. The outputs, which will be linked through a site-specific installation and an online platform, will then be accessible to community members, design firms, artists, and academics.
Overall, the project aims to convey the aura of past and existing conditions of place, as key informational indicators for future design processes. In particular, the presentation addresses the methodology and lexicon we are developing through this process, with attention paid to the confluence of space and time as key dimensions in the disciplines of landscape design and dance choreography. Specifically, we address the development of an interdisciplinary stratigraphic methodology that can offer a portrayal of landscape as a complex palimpsest, at different temporal scales, to inform future design processes.
Region 40: A National Park for the Anthropocene Epoch - Presented by Ryan Coates
May 13, 2021, 2:30 pm EDT
Landscapes, whether safeguarded or squandered, reveal a society’s values. Landscapes are always more than they appear to be; more than form or content, they reflect ethics, represent human relationships with the environment, and are repositories of imagination. No landscape type encompasses this better than the national park, which Parks Canada promotes as “tangible links not only with the past and the present but with the future”. These vignettes have historically showcased the Canadian landscape and our relationship to it as we would like it to be. However, projecting an environmental imagination that does not consider the landscape as it is, will lead to a failure to anticipate what it will become in our descent further into the Anthropocene.
The Canadian landscape as it is, is one of extraction, urbanization and consequent ecosystem degradation, all contributing to the feedback loop of global warming. These landscape acts not only reconfigure ecosystems, regions and territories, they reconfigure relationships, dreams and possibility. These are the landscapes and systems we must take responsibility for; first we must incorporate them into our collective environmental imagination as nationally significant environments. These landscapes, their effects - and their reclamation - are the landscapes of Parks Canada’s future.