GJ 113,860 60W light bulbs for one hour

means that they are unlikely to require affected organizations to redesign and rebuild public spaces for the purpose of bringing them into compliance. Ordinary maintenance activities, such as minor repairs or painting aimed at restoring a space or element to its prior condition, should not, generally speaking, trigger or engage the standards.

Limited Scope The Design of Public Spaces Standards apply only to developments or redevelopments undertaken by Ontario’s government and legislature (after 2014), by municipalities and other “Designated Public Sector Organizations” (after 2015), or by organizations with more than fifty employees (after January 1, 2017). Only a few of the standards are intended to apply to smaller organizations, beginning January 1, 2018.

It is important to note that the standards permit deviations from their technical specifications to the extent that “it is not practicable to comply with the requirements, or some of them, because existing physical or site constraints prohibit modification or addition of elements, spaces or features.” This provision may be engaged, for example, where rocks bordering a recreational trail or beach access route impede achieving the prescribed minimum clear width.

Also relevant is the fact that the standards only apply to those facilities and spaces that an obligated organization still “intends to maintain.” This likely means that when an obligated organization decides to abandon or cease operating an old recreational trail, beach access route, picnic area, parking lot, or outdoor play space, it is not required to keep these spaces compliant with the standards. For example, the operator of a forested park should probably not fall afoul of Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act inspectors because it lets its abandoned walking trails deteriorate and “return to nature” gradually, rather than demolishing them actively.

reconciling values and Priorities The Design of Public Spaces Standards regime is structured to avoid undermining the environmental and cultural objectives that make the creation of public spaces and public access desirable in the first place. For example, many public spaces, from provincial parks to forested urban ravines, exist at least in part to advance objectives such as habitat continuity or the preservation of “unspoiled” wilderness, and these objectives could be undermined by installing ramps, re-grading, or widening and upgrading trails and boardwalks. To avoid such outcomes:

• the standards regulation permits such deviations from its prescriptions and performance standards as are necessary to avoid significant risk of direct or indirect adverse effects upon water, fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity, or natural heritage values, or any risk of direct or indirect damage to the natural heritage of a UNESCO World

Heritage Site;

• separately, “wilderness trails, backcountry trails, and portage routes” are exempted altogether from the technical standards prescribed for recreational trails and beach access routes generally.

The Design of Public Spaces Standards are also subject to exceptions and exemptions that are designed to protect cultural and historic features. As with environmental values, standards may be deviated from as necessary to prevent them from:

• affecting the preservation of places set apart as National Historic Sites of

Canada by the Minister of the Environment for Canada under the Canada

National Parks Act;

• affecting the historic interest or significance of historic places marked or commemorated under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act;

• posing any risk of damage to the cultural heritage of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A related feature of the Design of Public Spaces Standards regulation is that it aims to avoid perverse impacts on active measures to advance environmental and broadly non-anthropocentric objectives. Obligated organizations might be deterred from modifying public spaces to create wildlife habitat, or to reduce the harm its parking facilities create for plants and animals, if this would trigger an obligation to bring a legacy facility into full compliance with new standards. Such disincentives are likely avoided by way of two carve-outs from the definition of “redeveloped” that exclude “environmental mitigation” or “environmental restoration.” Because of these carve-outs, the Design of Public Spaces Standards should not be engaged by:

• “activities that are intended to reduce, mitigate, prevent or compensate for adverse effects of human activities or items, including paths, play spaces, trails and parking, upon fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity or natural heritage values”;

• “activities that are intended to benefit fish, wildlife, plants, invertebrates, species at risk, ecological integrity or natural heritage values.”

When compared with the Human Rights Code, which engages with the built form of public space in broad and general terms, the Design of Public Spaces Standards seem to provide much more guidance for landscape architects. However, the standards contain ambiguities of their own, perhaps the most important of which is the question: what constitutes public space? While the standards apply only to “public spaces,” the term is not defined. Regardless of how this and other questions are ultimately answered, the coming into force of the Design of Public Spaces Standards puts landscape form, and the professional judgement of Ontario landscape architects, more squarely in the view of law enforcement and public policy makers.

bIo/ PhIL PoThEn, JD, MLA, IS A ToronTo-bASED LAnD-uSE PLAnnInG AnD EnvIronMEnTAL LAWyEr Who APPEArS bEforE ThE onTArIo MunIcIPAL boArD, EnvIronMEnTAL rEvIEW TrIbunAL, coMMITTEE of ADJuSTMEnT, SuPErIor courT, ThE huMAn rIGhTS TrIbunAL of onTArIo, AnD A rAnGE of oThEr ADJuDIcATIvE TrIbunALS. hE IS A MEMbEr of ThE GrouNd EDITorIAL boArD, AnD hAS A MASTEr’S DEGrEE In LAnDScAPE ArchITEcTurE froM ThE unIvErSITy of ToronTo AnD A JurIS DocTor froM ThE oSGooDE hALL LAW SchooL.

To vIEW ADDITIonAL conTEnT for ThIS ArTIcLE, vISIT WWW.GrounDMAG.cA.

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A month-long tour of European projects that address climate change adaptation and mitigation in effective and instructive ways TExT by JAMES MAcDonALD-nELSon

01-02/ Tredje Natur’s design for Saint Kjelds Square in Copenhagen incorporates green infrastructure to mitigate flooding. IMAGES/ Tredje Natur 03-04/ The London-based organization Groundwork is working in partnership with the Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham to transform three housing estates into demonstration sites for affordable, light engineering climate change adaptation measures, including Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS). IMAGES/ Mark Bentley

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Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have all, to varying degrees, begun to address climate change adaptation in unique and inspiring ways. Through policy and practice, these countries have implemented strategies to rethink urban infrastructure, be responsive and adaptive to flooding, increase biodiversity, and reduce the amount of energy required to sustain an ever-expanding urban population. In order to find out more about these initiatives, I travelled to Europe in the summer of 2016 to speak with people and visit projects that have been built with climate change adaptation and mitigation in mind.

My first stop was London, where I spoke with Tom Armour, director of landscape architecture at the global engineering firm ARUP. In 2014, ARUP’s internal think-tank, ARUP Foresight, produced a report called Cities Alive: Rethinking Green Infrastructure, which argues that cities must reintegrate natural processes through green infrastructure. This, Armour suggests, will create an adaptive functionality that embraces and works with the effects of a changing climate within the urban environment. Armour believes that this idea is starting to gain some traction in Europe. Indeed, in November 2015, Europe hosted its first annual conference completely dedicated to urban green infrastructure.

I also spoke with Mark Bentley of the U.K.-based environmental organization Groundwork, which works across the spectrum of community-building, promotion of environmental sustainability, combatting climate change, and providing work training and experience for youth. Bentley, a landscape architect, has been working on an EU-funded demonstration project on a housing estate in southwest London. Here, his team retrofitted a number of housing blocks using some very basic, but effective, design strategies. Employing SuDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems), the team installed green roofs and walls, bioswales, and rain gardens to better manage stormwater on site, and a monitoring system to demonstrate the impact of a few, seemingly small, design moves. Bentley suggests that while it’s important to think of green infrastructure from a regional perspective, we must remember that working from the bottom up is often the first step, and that pilot projects such as this can, and must, lead to a wider application of this type of design and planning.

From England, I flew to Helsinki, Finland, where I took a long walk through the city’s central parks with Sirkku Juhola, a professor at Aalto University’s Department of the Built Environment. Sirkku explained that across the Nordic region, there is strong research collaboration between nations. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have established a research consortium called Nord-Star, which seeks to “enable Nordic stakeholders to design and implement successful adaptation policy and practice.” As deputy director of research for Nord-Star at Aalto, Sirkku heads a research panel that performs comparative policy and case analysis intended to influence planning policy across the region. Specifically, their research looks at how climate change adaptation and mitigation policy is funnelled through layers of governance at the city level and what effect that has on the build-out of projects. By conducting a comparative case-study analysis between

05/ Helsinki waterfront

IMAGE/ Tredje Natur

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Copenhagen and Helsinki, they have found that Copenhagen’s progressive policy has led to the support and implementation of projects built in the name of adaptation. Helsinki, on the other hand, is equally threatened by storm events and sea-level rise, but is slower in adopting such an approach. But, as Sirkku points out, it’s important to cross-examine policy and practice on a regional scale, so that countries can learn from each other and ultimately support the implementation of progressive design.

After an insightful three days in Helsinki, I ventured to Sweden to continue my research, specifically in Malmö. Here, I had the opportunity to explore a part of the city called Västra Hamnen, the former western harbour, where a relatively new residential neighbourhood has emerged. The “City of Tomorrow,” as it is often called, was an ambitious plan to create a carbon-neutral zone in the city. The new neighbourhood uses progressive stormwater-management practices, 100 percent renewable energy, and efficient building design. It is often considered a leading example of environmental adaptation, and has won numerous design awards. Again, we see how adaptation and, in this case, mitigation, can begin to take form when intentions are clearly set. But a major aspect of adaptation must also include redesigning the existing urban fabric. For this I went to Copenhagen, where some very exciting things are happening.

Copenhagen’s maritime history is evident in the endless miles of harbourfront that surround the Danish capital. Much of this land is slowly being transformed into residential neighbourhoods, but the Danes have also made an effort to integrate miles of public space along the water. With this close relationship to the sea, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the city has had its fair share of storm events, or cloudburst as they refer to them. Over the years, this has caused billions of dollars in damages, and the city has had to respond in innovative ways. In 2011, a massive storm flooded many parts of the city, including the western district of Østerbro. As a response, the city has committed to adaptation policy and practice. An example is being led by a local landscape architecture firm, Tredje Natur (Third Nature), which proposed a design that will incorporate green infrastructural changes to better manage stormwater and mitigate damage caused by flooding while creating a more robust public realm by integrating these strategies into the streetscape and a new park. When I spoke with Ole Schrøder, one of the founding principals at Tredje Natur, he emphasized that we must adopt a “post-humanistic” approach to design,

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and that leading with the landscape and the natural processes that we are a part of, is of the upmost importance. Reimagining how our cities can function now and into the future means we must put adaptation and resiliency at the top of the priority list. This philosophy underlies the firm’s approach to design and serves as an example of how we can begin to change our perception of the urban landscape.

Leaving the Nordic region, I spent some time in the Netherlands. The Dutch are well known for their innovative approach to water management, and you can see this as you fly into Schiphol Airport over the endless miles of agricultural lands that are divided by narrow canals. As the sunset shimmers off the water, you can make out the intricate network of waterways that forms an integrated management system. Once on the ground, it becomes clear that water is a central figure in the Dutch landscape, as canals trail alongside city streets, rail corridors, and between towns. Indeed, water has played a central role in the prosperity of the country, but it

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11 has also dictated how planning and policy around water have taken shape over time. For this reason, I spoke with Martin Knuijt of OKRA Landscape Architects in Utrecht. OKRA has led the design of a number of coastal defence projects across the country. I spoke with Knuijt about a project in Katwijk, a small coastal town on the North Sea that integrates a series of dunes with buried dikes. This twenty-hectare system is intended to protect the town from storm surges while incorporating public space, an improved dune ecology, and underground parking for beach-goers. As a country that is immensely vulnerable to water, the Netherlands has had to seek innovative ways—by working with nature—to account for urban growth and the natural elements that are integral to their landscape.

Over the course of a month, I had the opportunity to speak to some incredible people who offered invaluable insight on what we can do as landscape architects in the face of climate change. Ultimately, this trip taught me that there is no blueprint for adaptive design. Yes, we should look to other countries for inspiration, but mitigation and adaptation must be contextualized in order to truly work. As designers, we are constantly looking ahead and using our imagination to creatively change our physical environment. In doing so, we also have a responsibility to use our skills to positively impact the earth. Ecological systems and the built environment do not function separately, but rather in tandem, and it is imperative that we seek to integrate them so that they complement and enhance one another.

bIo/ JAMES MAcDonALD-nELSon GrADuATED froM ThE unIvErSITy of ToronTo’S MLA ProGrAM AT ThE John h. DAnIELS fAcuLTy of ArchITEcTurE, LAnDScAPE, AnD DESIGn In 2015. SIncE GrADuATInG, JAMES hAS bEEn WorkInG on An InDEPEnDEnTLy LED rESEArch ProJEcT concErnInG cLIMATE chAnGE ADAPTATIon, boTh AT hoME AnD AbroAD, WhILE WorkInG AS A LAnDScAPE DESIGnEr In ToronTo.

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06-08/ Bioswales and green roofs in the Västra Hamnen area of Malmö

IMAGES/ James MacDonald-Nelson

09/ Copenhagen waterfront IMAGE/ James MacDonald-Nelson

10/ Boardwalk in Katwijk, a small coastal town on the North Sea in the Netherlands

IMAGE/ James MacDonald-Nelson

11/ The coastal defence plan in Katwijk integrates dunes and buried dikes. IMAGE/ OKRA Landscape Architects 12/ ARUP head office, London

Ruthanne Henry, OALA, and Dalia Todary-Michael in conversation with Tom Ostler and Andrew Millward about green citybuilding data-collection and data visualization.

bIoS/ ruThAnnE hEnry, oALA, IS chAIr of ThE GrouNd EDITorIAL boArD.

AnDrEW MILLWArD IS An ASSocIATE ProfESSor of GEoGrAPhy AnD ThE PrIncIPAL InvESTIGATor WITh ThE urbAn forEST rESEArch & EcoLoGIcAL DISTurbAncE (ufrED) GrouP AT ryErSon unIvErSITy In ToronTo.

ToM oSTLEr WAS WITh ThE cITy of ToronTo for 34 yEArS AnD IS noW A PLAnnInG conSuLTAnT AnD PArT-TIME InSTrucTor In ryErSon’S SchooL of urbAn AnD rEGIonAL PLAnnInG.

DALIA ToDAry-MIchAEL IS A MEMbEr of ThE GrouNd EDITorIAL boArD.

ruthanne henry (rh): Green city-building can mean many things—for example, increased sustainability through permeable surfaces, green infrastructure, and urban parkland, along with the equitable distribution of these green assets across diverse populations. Tom, can you tell me a bit about your background in data collection related to city-building, and give some examples of what the data was used for and why?

Tom ostler (To): Starting in the late 1970s, I helped establish the land-use information system for the City of Toronto, which tracked physical changes in the city and monitored new development applications by recording the size, height, number of buildings on site, site coverage, and other information. Following amalgamation in 1998, it was challenging to collect data across the entire city, because the former municipalities were not tracking physical changes in that way. But we sorted that out by implementing a system for collecting all of that data for development projects as they entered the approval stream.

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rh: What was that built-form information used for?

To: It would provide density information at a site or block level, and data for analyzing physical trends in the city and how they relate to market activity. In terms of the office market, for example, the data would show how much office space had been built, and the City could marry that with our data collected from employment surveys in order to look at how space is actually utilized.

rh: Is built-form data compared to demographic/economic data in order to help determine whether some areas of the city might have greater needs for certain resources? To: The data are not comparable, but sometimes one can make inferences on a spatial basis. A key initiative for the city has been the designation of Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. This social development initiative overlays demographic data with data on social assistance rates and social services including housing-stock data from Toronto Community Housing Corporation, along with data that reflect social needs. When planning for improvements for these communities, one of the things City Planning can bring to the table is data about new development applications that are in the pipeline. One of the more interesting things was that in neighbourhoods where there were no development applications, there was little opportunity to leverage private sector initiatives to contribute to community benefits, but there were market interests, often on the edge of the communities, because they’re generally defined by arterial roads, and that’s where there was development interest.

rh: Andrew, can you talk about green citybuilding and the role of public education in relation to green city assets?

Andrew Millward (AM): For the past ten years, I’ve focused my research on urban forest-related interests and have used geographic data for the purpose of protecting and expanding nature in cities. With my training in computer-based mapping technologies, and in remote-sensing data interpretation, I’m working on bringing together social and environmental spatial data and asking questions oriented at further expanding the potential for equitable access to nature in cities. We’ve developed a web app that we

call Citytrees; at present, it’s a collaboration between Ryerson University and Codetuitive, a private-sector web development company. The overall goal of the project is to enhance engagement with nature in our cities by providing people with a tool to explore trees in their neighbourhoods, and, where data related to trees is not available, giving people the opportunity, through a citizen-science-based platform, to add to an open access database of urban trees and their many attributes.

Citytrees functions in a variety of ways, one of which is fairly immersive in that it allows someone to use a mobile device, walk through a neighbourhood, and when you’re in a certain geographic proximity to a tree, it alerts you so you can explore the attributes of that tree, in addition to the environmental functions that that individual tree is providing. We’ve worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service to integrate some of their models, mostly from the iTree suite of tools, to be able to feed various tree characteristics into the model, receive the environmental benefits back, and then populate our Citytrees application with the data. For the citizen-sciencecreated information, we have a somewhat more simplistic tool, with an estimator built in; so, if someone is able to measure the diameter (or DBH) of a tree and input the species name, we’re able to provide a very general estimate of the many environmental services that the tree is providing. Our intent is that by putting this tool in the hands of citizens and homeowners, we can raise awareness about the benefits of nature, which can lead to proactive stewardship initiatives. Some of the other work my research group does is with satellite imagery, classifying this imagery according to tree cover characteristics and correlating these characteristics, spatially, with the sociodemographic characteristics of neighbourhoods as a means of investigating who has access to nature in cities.

rh: Your tool sounds very useful for community stewardship and neighbourhood forestry plans, such as Neighbourwoods, for example. You could use Citytrees if you were a BIA or an organization that wanted to do a Neighbourwoods community forestry plan.

AM: Citytrees has been designed in such a way that it requires a user to create an account. A BIA could create an account, for example, as a way to manage its trees and monitor their condition and delivery of environmental benefits. Currently, we have an operational prototype of Citytrees for most of Leslieville and Riverdale [neighbourhoods in Toronto] street tree data; so in theory someone could walk those streets and learn about all the street trees there. Our goal in 2017 is to migrate all of the City of Toronto street tree data—half a million trees—into Citytrees. Citizens can also go and collect their own data on private property, such as in backyards, and contribute it to Citytrees. Such citizen-sourced data can then be used to build out the database, as private trees usually outumber public ones within cities. Citytrees data can also be made private (not visible to others), by its contributor, should such a requirement exist.

Dalia Todary-Michael (DTM): I’d like to ask about integration and visualization of the data. Since there are two sources of data—information that you’ve collected and also information that people are contributing—what’s the extent of accuracy when it comes to empirical data and how you represent it? AM: It’s important to stress that we’re in the development stage with Citytrees. With regard to data collection, and the accuracy of citizen-contributed data, our intention is that users are able to filter and visualize and make distinctions between the different sources of data. Although there is debate around the whole idea of citizen science and what if the data are wrong, our argument is that the fundamental reason for developing this tool is to try to engage more people around the value of nature in cities.

rh: You’re both working right now in academics. How important is collaboration with municipalities and academics around integration and application?

AM: Data liberation—making data available that was otherwise very difficult to ascertain— provides real-world examples to students. I think Canada is a little bit behind in terms of open data, so I’m really delighted to see that, especially in southern Ontario, and specifically in the Greater Toronto Area, we’re now gaining access to this sort of information.

Several of my graduate students are experimenting with City of Toronto massing data (which refers to building heights and all the different architectural specs of buildings) to produce shadow coverages, which can be useful in terms of urban trees that are sensitive to different amounts of sunlight. It’s an interesting example of how that kind of architectural building data can fuse with decisions regarding green space.

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01/ Mountain Equipment Co-op green roof, Toronto IMAGE/ Jackman Chiu

02/ National biomass and carbon dataset, map by Robert Simmon, based on data from Woods Hole Research Center

IMAGE/ NASA Earth Observatory 03/ Tree measuring is a basic component of data gathering in the urban forest. IMAGE/ Ollivier Girard

Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events

invasive species

To slow the spread of emerald ash borer into new parts of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is expanding areas regulated to control the movement of potentially infested materials to include the city of Thunder Bay. People who move regulated materials from regulated areas without the permission of the CFIA could face fines and/or prosecution. For more information, visit www.inspection.gc.ca.

climate change

A newly formed nonpartisan grassroots network in the U.S., called Architects Advocate Action on Climate Change, has formed to work towards meaningful legislation to mitigate climate change. For more information on this initiative and on members of the network, visit www.architects-advocate.com.

conferences

“The North American Invasive Species Forum: Building Cooperation Across Borders,” a biennial conference encompassing the interests of professionals and organizations involved in invasive species management, research, and regulation in North America, will be held from May 9-11, 2017, in Savannah, Georgia. For more information, visit www.invasivespecies2017.org.

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books

A recently published book, Experimenting Landscapes: Testing the Limits of the Garden (Birkhäuser, 2016), edited by Emily Waugh, focuses on the Métis International Garden Festival, held annually in Quebec, and features a selection of 25 of the more than 150 temporary gardens at the cutting edge of garden design and environmental art that have been been installed over the years at the festival. Grouped according to various conceptual frames, and with essays and descriptions by practitioners, the book offers a feast of ideas, provocations, and inspiration. Another recent book, Cities of Farmers: Urban Agricultural Practices and Processes (University of Iowa Press, 2016), a collection of essays edited by Julie C. Dawson and Alfonso Morales, explores the urban planning and built environment context of urban agriculture and includes a number of case studies.

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infrastructure

Now in its 5th year, “Grey to Green,” a conference that explores the most recent green infrastructure science, economic valuation, asset management, public policy developments, new technology, and best practices in design, installation, and maintenance, is being held in Toronto from May 8-10, 2017. This year’s theme is quantifying green infrastructure performance. For more information, visit www.greytogreenconference.org.

new members

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new full members to the Association:

Anita Bennell Jeff Cutler Jessie Elliot Brunning * Rebecca Ellis * Karen Leasa * Andrea Mantin * Lacey Pearse * Mark Talarico Ben Vander Veen Moira Wilson * Thomas Woltz

Asterisk (*) denotes Full Members without the use of professional seal.

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art

Grow Op, an annual urbanism, landscape, and contemporary art exhibition, will be held at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto from April 20-23, 2017. As in past years, the show features the work of many artists in overlapping disciplines presenting challenging, provocative, humorous, and thoughtful explorations of landscape. For more information, visit www.gladstonehotel.com.

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awards

Nicolas Koff, a co-founder of Office OU, an emerging landscape/architecture practice based in Toronto, recently announced that Office OU’s proposal for the new National Museum Complex of South Korea (in collaboration with Korea’s Junglim Architecture) was selected as the winning design to be implemented, following an international design competition that received more than 80 entries from 26 countries. For more information, visit www. nmcc2016.org/english/awards/ awards_04.asp.

transportation

The Toronto Centre for Active Transportation recently published Active Transportation Planning Beyond the Greenbelt: The Outer Ring of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Region, a new book that profiles 13 recent projects that have improved conditions for walking and cycling in unique contexts beyond the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. For more information, visit www.tcat.ca

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02/ Round Up (After Monet) was created for the festival by Legge Lewis Legge in 2008.

IMAGE/ Métis International Garden Festival

03/ Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell’s Dymaxion Sleep was shown at the Métis International Garden Festival from 2009 to 2011.

IMAGE/ Métis International Garden Festival

04/ The exhibition Grow Op will take place in Toronto in April. IMAGE/ Grow Op 05-08/ Office OU’s winning proposal for the National Museum Complex of South Korea

IMAGES/ Nicolas Koff

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Glynis Logue on her sculptural insect landscape

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01-05/ A community-based creative project led by artist Glynis Logue, in Guelph, used felled ash trees to create a larger-than life sculptural insect landscape. IMAGES/ Glynis Logue 01

TExT by GLynIS LoGuE

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Creature Currents is a Guelph-based creative project that repurposed seven locally felled ash trees destroyed by the emerald ash borer. In the summer of 2016, over a two-month period, the dying trees were transformed to amplify the impact that unpredictable weather conditions are having on the migration of moths and other insects and to facilitate the production of a larger-than-life sculptural insect landscape.

Sawn bark and inner wood slabs became the building blocks for citizens to reposition their closeness to ecology amidst a backdrop of climate change. As such, the project invited Guelph farmers’ market visitors to choose from a selection of printed images that depict nature and the various airborne and wind-propelled insects that inhabit it. Participants were shown how to transfer these images onto pieces of reclaimed local ash wood, which were then assembled into a kinetic public art installation designed to be set into motion by passersby and the wind.

The artwork questions how nature will thrive in the urban landscape and possible social trajectories. By giving new meaning and presence to Guelph’s former ash trees, Creature Currents serves as a highly visible beacon, stimulating the imagination and building awareness of life’s constant changes—especially in the world of bugs.

bIo/ GLynIS LoGuE IS A GuELPh-bASED EnvIronMEnTAL DESIGnEr AnD ArTIST WITh MorE ThAn 20 yEArS of ExPErIEncE In bIoLoGIcAL ScIEncE, EcoLoGIcAL ArT, AnD coMMunITy EnGAGEMEnT. hEr Work hAS bEEn rEcoGnIzED for ITS unIquE AbILITy To offEr WAyfInDInG, hEALInG, AnD crITIcAL convErSATIonS AbouT our EnvIronMEnTAL fuTurE.