Valdie Seymour: Valdie has over 40 years of experience in cross-cultural development and implementation  of community resource training programs. This experience includes, counselling, therapy, individual and family personal development, as well as human resources networking. Valdie has developed processes to train community citizens to identify their own community issues and facilitate their own community solutions.

Valdie has been instrumental in establishing a pattern in community programs in which community citizens examine their lives, take responsibility for their actions, and actively contribute to community health and relationships. He was part of the initial effort at establishing a community initiated ally supported healing movement in Hollow Water First Nation. Hollow Water’s healing movement began to emerge with the commitment of community citizens working with ally institutions. Eventually, Hollow Water’s healing movement resulted in the creation, development, and continuation of the Community Holistic Circle Healing (CHCH) organization – an organization that developed Manitoba’s Restorative Justice and Sentencing Circle in 1989.  https://umanitoba.ca/architecture/elder-valdie-seymour

Christophe Girot Professor for Landscape Architecture Head of Chair, ETH, Zürich

https://girot.arch.ethz.ch/?team=christophe-girot

“Christophe Girot is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Department of Architecture of the ETH in Zürich since 2001. He has directed the Institute of Landscape Architecture since 2005 and received the ETH Golden Owl award for teaching excellence in 2016.

His research cover three domains:

• Methods in landscape architecture and topology
• New media in landscape analysis and perception
• History and theory of Western landscape architecture.

Emphasis at the Chair is given to large scale landscape design and modelling methods with particular attention to the topology of nature in and around cities. The LVML (landscape visualising and modelling laboratory) of the ETH funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation shared by the Department of Architecture and the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics has enabled significant advances in applied landscape design and point cloud modelling. Ongoing research with the NCCR in Digital Fabrication, the Kyoto Institute of Technology, CTI and SNF grants has yielded ground breaking results in point cloud design, modelling and acoustic sensing.

He holds a practice in Zürich with projects in Europe and in Asia. The Sigirino Mound project for the Alp Transit Company in Ticino as well as the Brissago Garden project in Ticino with SAM architects test current limits of topological design and modelling in challenging alpine situations. He is widely published and his Book entitled “The Course of Landscape Architecture” published by Thames & Hudson was released in 2016.”

Marc Hallé CCxA, Co-President, Montreal

Homepage

“Marc Hallé is a partner at CCxA Architectes paysagistes in Montreal with an MLA from the University of Toronto and a B.Eng from the University of Saskatchewan.  CCxA recently transitioned from Claude Cormier + Associés, where Marc began in 2003.  The practice is renowned for bringing joy and optimism into the public realm characterized by singular conceptual simplicity and rigourous technical detailing.”

Brett Huson, Gitxsan Knowledge Keeper & Artist, Winnipeg

https://www.bretthuson.ca

Hetxw’ms Gyetxw, also known as Brett D. Huson (he/him/his), is from the Gitxsan Nation of the Northwest Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Influenced by this matrilineal society, Brett developed a passion for his people’s culture, land, and politics and a desire to share their knowledge and stories. He has worked in the film and television industry for over 16 years and is the volunteer chair for the sakihiwe Music Festival (sakihiwe.ca). Brett is also a member of the Science Committee for Adaptation Futures 2023 (adaptationfutures.com). The multi-award-winning Mother’s of Xsan is Brett’s first series of books, and he is currently writing new books both in Fiction and Non-fiction that explore the worlds of the Gitxsan culture and perspective.

With the support of his wife Jeri and their children Warren and Ruby, Brett endeavours to continue sharing the stories from the land and creating dialogue and understanding around indigenous pedagogies and ways of knowing. Brett is also working with the Prairie Climate Centre at the University of Winnipeg to connect science and Indigenous Knowledges. This work has led to the launch of the Indigenous Knowledges section of the Climate Atlas (climateatlas.ca).

Andrew King Principal FLDWRK, Senior Partner lemay, Montreal

https://fldwrk.ca/notes/manifesto-canadian-design/  + https://lemay.com/what-we-do/

“FLDWRK is a research and design collective that investigates the current systemic transitions of society. We reach beyond the traditional practice of design to holistically respond to emerging challenges.

the OBLIGATION of CANADIAN DESIGN

Canada exists as a dance between rich cultural mosaics and an immense natural abundance, and Canadian design is the choreographer of said whirl. As the world witnesses the accumulating effects of environmental degradation and social injustice, this becomes a HEAVY ABUNDANCE threaded through with an implicit obligation:

To re-conceptualize this abundance through provocative and radical responses to normative modes of thinking and making, leveraging it as a mechanism for swift and powerful change, shifting from consumption to stewardship, from profligate waste to careful curation, from privilege to obligation.

To create and build in Canada is to draw from this rich land and refined legacy to extract something new. With this act of producing comes obligation.

We cannot regress back to the colonial Western settler mindset of individualism. Indigenous values inform our future and our obligations to the land, to water, to trees—to our way in the world. Canadian design must embrace this moral obligation. We must function as a collective: At once Indigenous and settler, immigrant and refugee, we must be united through our shared past and present and future.

Together, we inhabit and must care for this land.

HEAVY ABUNDANCE is a viable future. The perpetual need to grow and innovate must remain, but in response to environmental degradation and social injustice. Canadian design can reframe our legacy of shameless ambition and disregard, and effectively evidence change. We are abundant, and so Canadian design must reconceptualize, redistribute, rearrange, and redesign in response. This is our duty, to redefine our aspirations, our processes, our way in the world—to provide a more hopeful and inclusive future.

Canada can do this now.”

lemay “A transdisciplinary team at the core of each project

To ensure that you benefit from optimal synergy, we bring together a team of experts who design, define and implement your project together, from start to finish. Facilitating this process is our project management office.”

David McMillan, Photographer

https://atomicphotographersguild.org/photographers/david-mcmillan/

“David McMillan was born in Scotland and educated in the United States, eventually getting a graduate degree in fine art. He briefly taught painting and drawing at the University of Manitoba before establishing the photography program there. His interests evolved from a formal concern with colour and space to the depiction of the often uneasy relationship between nature and culture. In 1994, this interest led him to visit the guarded zone surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which had been evacuated because of the enormous amount of radiation released in the 1986 accident. Within this circumscribed area, several “themes” emerged – the existential threat posed by technology, the resilience of nature, and the transience of culture. Since his initial visit to the exclusion zone, McMillan has returned 21 times. His photographs have been shown internationally in many solo and group exhibitions. The comprehensive monograph “Growth and Decay: Prypiat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone” was published in early 2019 (Steidl).”

Roger Mullin, Dalhousie University, School of Architecture, Halifax

https://www.dal.ca/faculty/architecture-planning/school-of-architecture/faculty-staff/faculty/roger-mullin.html

Roger Mullin’s research interests investigate the materiality and imperatives of buildings, infrastructures, and urban form, with a focus on coastal landscapes in the North Atlantic and areas of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas. This work is bracketed by concurrent research in methods of representation and design-build. Developments of these activities are carried forward through community partnerships, field-work, and writing.

Sally Stone, Manchester School of Architecture, UK

https://www.msa.ac.uk/staff/sstone/ 

“I am the Programme Leader for the MA Architecture and Adaptive Reuse programme and Director of the Continuity in Architecture Atelier at the Manchester School of Architecture. My work is concerned with the sustainable reuse of buildings and situations. I have been designing, drawing, formulating ideas and writing about interiors and adaptive reuse for thirty years. I am the author of UnDoing Buildings (Routledge, 2019), and co-author of ReReadings Volumes 1 + 2 (RIBA Publications, 2004, 2018), Emerging Practices in Pedagogy (Routledge, 2021) and the forthcoming Remember Reveal Construct (Routledge).”

Liz Wreford + Peter Sampson Public City Architecture, Winnipeg

https://www.publiccityarchitecture.com/about

“PUBLIC CITY is a critical design studio practicing architecture in Manitoba and Ontario and practicing landscape architecture in Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The firm is owned and led by Liz Wreford and Peter Sampson, award-winning design principals who collectively hold 50 years of experience in professional design practice. Public City is known for its collaborative and inclusive approach to design, people, and context.
As a transdisciplinary design firm, Public City is committed to a practice that is deeply rooted in the belief that the cross pollination of ideas and expertise latent in a project team is the key to a project’s success. Our expertise includes architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, public art, public engagement and indigenous design consultation in a single hybrid practice.”