Research and Innovation
Our faculty and researchers are a collective of explorers, artists, statisticians, engineers, cultural sponges and knowledge generators.
Research Impact Report | 2017-2022
We use design-based thinking to discover potential solutions and establish lasting partnerships committed to the realization of healthy, sustainable, vibrant, and equitable cities.
This Research Report summarizes the exemplary research led by our remarkably diverse faculty members, students, project partners, and collaborators.
Featured 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.
Timber-based DfMA Façade Components for Factory-in-a-Box (FIAB) based Digital Manufacturing (DM) technologies
Alicia Nahmad Vazquez
Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) and Digital Manufacturing (DM), particularly as related to timber construction, is expensive, making the technology out of reach for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This MITACS Accelerate Grant-funded research seeks to democratize this technology by bringing Factory-in-a-Box (FIAB) based DM technologies adapted to meet the needs of the SME sector in construction. The project aims to generate a system to design timber façade components and their fabrication system that can be contained in a box and transported on-site or near-site as an alternative to factory-based production of architectural timber components.
Richard Parker Institute: Hybrid CommUNITY
Fabian Neuhaus
In collaboration with downtown Calgary’s first pay-what-you-can thrift store, Good Neighbour YYC, NXC and TLN facilitated a four-week pop-up. This included interventions outside - activating the street and sidewalk - and inside with interactive installations that bridged online and offline, such as a drawing robot visualizing virtual messages on site that were later turned into physical postcards, and light-up installations during the long dark winter month in Calgary. The activation is documented in the NXC magazine issue #11: Hybrid Community Pop Up.
Design-based research
The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape actively engages in community-based, industry focused projects in our City Building Design Lab (CBDLab), often operating at the centre of interdisciplinary teams from across the University of Calgary. Our innovative projects include integrative infrastructure for sustainable cities, healthy neighborhoods, high performance building envelopes, co-creation, green infrastructure, digital fabrication for the circular economy, outdoor playscapes in urban environments, affordable housing, walkable cities, aging in place, and many more...
Solium Capital Stock Wall by Laboratory for Integrative Design. Iterative process with the client resulted in conversion of images associated with financial markets, regional landscapes, and symbols of the Canadian west into a large 3D installation.
Laboratory for Integrative Design
Building Calgary together
We operate at the centre of interdisciplinary teams from across the University of Calgary in the City Building Design Lab (CBDLab). Located next door to City Hall, the CBDLab brings together graduate students, academics, building industry professionals, municipal policy makers, and the public to explore new directions in city-building.
Face shield prototype laser cut with head rests, back
Grand challenges
Our research projects address three grand challenge themes: Designing Out Waste, Cities for All, and Metropolitan Growth and Change. The themes leverage the lab’s our central downtown location and unique collaboration of academia, industry, and policy makers to explore the potential of circular city building to increase Calgary’s downtown and neighborhood vibrancy, reduce the city’s environmental footprint, provide advanced skill-building opportunities for current and future AEC professionals, expand the public conversation around design thinking for city-building, and help promote entrepreneurial job creation and economic diversification in the knowledge sector of Calgary’s building and construction industry.
We integrate these research activities into the learning experience of students in our professional degree programs in architecture, planning, and landscape architecture as well as our research-based degrees at the Masters and Doctoral levels.
Calling all innovators
Seeking to push the boundaries of city building design and want to start a research collaboration?