Research and Innovation
Research Overview
At SAPL, researching the future of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture means thinking through problems using processes of making and discovery. Our participatory processes of co-creation extend beyond the studio and the workshop, using design thinking to approach challenges in collaboration with key stakeholders.
As part of the University of Calgary’s Ahead of Tomorrow strategy, which seeks to maximize research impact by harnessing the power of research and innovation to tackle society’s biggest challenges, SAPL research projects bring together industry partners, community organisations, graduate and undergraduate students, and transdisciplinary researchers from across the University of Calgary and beyond. Our commitment to inclusive, impactful and innovative research practices and processes defines our actions and is present in our four key values:
- Climate Action
- Social Justice
- Community Impact
- Value-Informed Innovation
University of Calgary: Ahead of Tomorrow
Informed by the need to approach today’s pressing issues through critical and applied design thinking, our students and faculty work with community, industry, government and academic partners in order to maximize impact and shape a better future together.
As part of the broader University of Calgary community, SAPL uses its design-based research expertise to power positive change. Our research informs our curricular offerings while our courses in turn prepare students to positively contribute to our research projects and partners.
Labs and Research Groups: Connecting to the City
SAPL researchers have established multiple labs and research groups that look at the challenges and opportunities of city-building through the lenses of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture. Each unit combines the expertise of SAPL faculty members, the enthusiasm and new ideas of SAPL students, and the experience of community and industry partners.
Through the City Building Design Lab in the Castell building, and our coming relocation to a permanent downtown site, our research units are linked to the city and the challenges that need to be addressed through design thinking and research.
Highlighted Projects
Civic Commons Catalyst: Supporting Transformative Revitalization of Underutilized Spatial Assets in Albertan Cities
Alberto De Salvatierra
The Civic Commons Catalyst is an interdisciplinary research and innovation platform embedded with SAPL’s City Building Design Lab. The Catalyst, together with the CBDLab and its partner faculties and growing list of civil society and government partners, is a vehicle for transformational and long-term change for real estate and other city-building industries, organizations and sectors. Aimed at taking underutilized spatial assets in Albertan cities and catalyzing them into positive assets 50 Grand Challenge 4 Rebooting Downtown for community that can revitalize downtowns, the Catalyst is identifying zones of opportunity so that assets can be networked together and help focus strategies for economic development and impact investment. The Catalyst is currently focused on the 30% vacancy in Calgary’s downtown core, while branching out to three additional Alberta communities by deploying the research methods and findings to a rural setting—opening up opportunities and strategies for replicability across the rest of the Province. With a catalog, an ideation methodology, and detailed design proposals and partnerships to advance them, the Catalyst is providing a clear and innovative roadmap to engage in economic development and impact investment in downtown cores—providing lasting impact to municipalities and the real estate industry.
Center for Civilization. Calgary's Elemental Landscapes of Risk, 2021.
Landscape in Motion: Violent tumbling down hill.
Landscape In Motion
Enrica Dall’Ara, Mary-Ellen Tyler
Funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2019), Landscape in Motion is an interdisciplinary research project in the fields of landscape design and performance/digital arts, developed by landscape architect Enrica Dall’Ara and site choreographer Melanie Kloetzel. The project focuses on infrastructures in Ramsay and Inglewood in Calgary. These neighborhoods boast complex interfaces between the city centre, rivers, cultural heritage sites, mobility infrastructures, industrial sites and brownfields; the community offers a provocative landscape for developing an interdisciplinary methodology that fosters innovative approaches to urban revitalization processes. At present, the implementation of city plans in Calgary – such as the imminent construction of a new LRT line (the Green Line) that will radically transform the Ramsay/Inglewood area – highlights the need to consider cultural heritage in light of future development.
FoSA (Future of Stephen Ave.)
Joshua Taron; Alicia Nahmad Vazquez; Kris Fox; Fabian Neuhaus
The City of Calgary is currently re-imagining iconic Stephen Avenue/8thAvenue from City Hall to Mewata Armoury. As a flagship project for Calgary’s Downtown Strategy, FoSA provides a foundation for the City to collaborate with stakeholders to consider and implement strategic improvements – whether near-, medium- or longer-term – that will reposition Stephen Avenue and ensure its future as Calgary’s downtown “Main Street”. Through the Urban Alliance, the City is engaged in a research partnership with the University of Calgary, which provides the City with access to expertise from a variety of disciplines, and the University with the opportunity to apply their academic research to an exciting and impactful city-building project.
Center for Civilization, Strata, 2023. Photo: Max Krewiak.
Student Research
Student training is at the heart of the research enterprise at SAPL. Graduate students in our three professional programs (MArch, MLA, MPlan) and our thesis-based programs (MEDes and PhD) are key members of research teams, and provide input and direction under the oversight of faculty members on every research project undertaken at SAPL. This experience provides training on research methods and design skills, and also gives invaluable experience in project management that will aid students as they pursue their academic and professional careers.
Finally, undergraduate research is nurtured through the University’s URSS summer scholarships, which provide a significant number of Bachelor of Design in City Innovation students with a foundation in research methods and approaches, and creates a pipeline of talented student researchers as they move on to graduate programs.
Research Projects
Where SAPL values are translated into action
SAPL is a living laboratory where passionate research faculty and cohorts of committed student researchers collaborate with each other and with partners in government, the design-build industry, and grassroots community groups to identify needs and opportunities in our city. Together they apply fundamental skills, disruptive thinking, and advanced technology to propose innovative answers to these questions through research projects that push forward the possibilities of what design can accomplish for the built environment and the people in our community.