We are excited to announce that Glen Road Pedestrian Bridge & Tunnel is now open!

Maintaining its historical location under Bloor Street East and over Rosedale Valley Ravine, the new infrastructure serves as a critical connection between the neighbourhoods of St. James Town and Rosedale.

The design retains the core visual character of the original bridge while enhancing the above-deck user experience and safety with innovative V-shaped barriers, stainless steel webnet, and LED lighting. The bridge and tunnel have been widened to increase openness and sightlines, and the tunnel surfaces are enriched with new art by Inuit artist Couzyn van Heuvelen. The art is inspired by themes of migration and travel, with references to Inuit stone-cut printmaking techniques.

Learn more about the project: Glen Road Pedestrian Bridge & Tunnel

DTAH Associate Partner Colin Berman, along with Sonja Vangjeli and Shayna Stott, will speak about ‘Decarbonizing the Public Realm’ at the CSLA-OALA Congress this year. The built environment accounts for 75% of global carbon emissions. While buildings have been the focus of attention to reduce our carbon footprint, urban landscapes are still a new frontier that offers huge potential for climate mitigation and carbon-conscious design. A series of studies conducted by the City of Toronto and partners will be discussed, analyzing the carbon performance of commonly built urban landscape typologies (private development landscapes, POPS, parks, and streetscapes) and typical material assemblies. Through this talk, Colin will explain the findings and resources to provide helpful frameworks for landscape architects to reduce the carbon footprint of public realm designs. 

The Education Session will take place Saturday, June 7th at 1 p.m.

Learn more about the CSLA 2025 Congress: 2025 Congress | CSLA

DTAH Partner Megan Torza will give a talk at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture on placemaking for an evolving culture and climate. As our region continues to urbanize, public projects such as parks, plazas, and market pavilions are increasingly proposed within floodplains or brownfields, where the line between public amenity and infrastructure is blurred. These projects are also asked to incorporate adaptability and resilience (both relating to programming and climate) while delivering an authentic user experience unique to their time and place. Using recent work on the Niagara Falls Exchange, the Brampton Riverwalk Master Plan, and Evergreen Brick Works as examples, Megan will elaborate upon the current placemaking design opportunities and some of the challenges faced by designers tackling projects intended to serve the public good.

Register for the event: Placemaking for an evolving Culture and Climate | GVSA

Thursday, May 29, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
ARC - School of Architecture
7 Melville Street South
Cambridge, ON, CA  N1S 2H4

We are thrilled to announce that we are participating in Doors Open this year! Our new studio will be open to the public for the first time on Saturday, May 24, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Doors Open provides a great opportunity to see our working environment as a leading landscape architecture, architecture, and urban design studio. Drawings, renderings, and photographs of DTAH projects in various stages of development will be on display to showcase how we are continuing to shape Toronto. 

The theme of this year is The City is your Playground. We will offer free presentations on playfulness in our designs as part of the Toronto Society of Architects (TSA) Open Studio program. The schedule is as follows:

11:00 a.m. Reimagining Children’s Play at Evergreen Brick Works, presented by DTAH Partner Megan Torza (in studio)

1:00 p.m. From Cattle Ranch to Public Park: A playful transformation of Redpath Avenue Parkette, presented by DTAH Associate Fraser Vanderwel (in studio)

2:00 p.m. and 4 p.m. Walking tour of St. Andrew’s Playground Park, with DTAH Partner James Roche (at the corner of Adelaide St. and Brant St.) Register for tickets at the TSA website: https://torontosocietyofarchitects.ca/events/tsa-tours-at-doors-open-st-andrews-playground-park/

We are located at 425 Adelaide St. West, across from our national award-winning project, St. Andrew’s Playground Park. Volunteers will greet guests in the lobby to guide them to our studio. Please note that the walking tours will start from the park at the corner of Adelaide St. W and Brant St.

The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) has announced the recipients of the 2025 Awards of Excellence, and we are honoured that the Vaughan Complete Streets Guide is one of the projects recognized with an award this year.

The Vaughan Complete Streets Guide is the city’s primary resource for street design for practitioners, decision-makers, and the public. Like many post-war communities, Vaughan’s streets have been designed to prioritize the automobile over all other users. Emerging policy objectives recognize this imbalance. They call for a new paradigm that promotes safe, sustainable, future-ready streets that support varied and inclusive mobility choices for pedestrians, active transportation, and transit users. The Vaughan Complete Streets Guide will help Vaughan better integrate diverse modes and provide safe access for people of all ages and abilities.

Compared to other street design guides, this landscape architect-led exercise places greater emphasis on placemaking. The Guide stresses the importance of street performance beyond vehicle operations to prioritize inclusivity and sustainability and pays greater attention to embedding street trees, green infrastructure, stormwater management, and low-impact development in street design. Its non-prescriptive outlook encourages adaptive approaches, reduces reliance on ‘ready-made’ solutions, and offers lessons to other jurisdictions with similar street systems and contexts.

The 2025 Awards of Excellence will be celebrated during the Awards Gala at the 2025 CSLA-OALA Congress which will be held in Ottawa, Ontario at the Rogers Centre (formerly the Shaw Centre) on June 7, 2025.

These award-winning projects are preeminent examples of Canadian landscape architecture. They illustrate the range of what landscape architects do and how landscape architects are helping to reshape our communities by defining the places where we live, work, and play.

DTAH Partner Mark Langridge will lead a guided walk of Flora Footbridge and Vimy Memorial Bridge in Ottawa for the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Conference! Jack Ajrab from Parsons and Matthew Julian from WSP will also join to provide technical insights as the structural engineers for these projects.   

Flora Footbridge and Vimy Memorial Bridge both span across the Rideau Canal World Heritage Site, providing key new connections between neighborhoods in Ottawa. These multi-award-winning projects seek to introduce a contemporary aesthetic that enhances the heritage context as well as the user experience. Mark will discuss the importance of bridge design as public space and demonstrate how these two bridges serve multiple functions for the greater community. 

The walk will take place in Ottawa on May 15th, from 2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Jane’s Walk is a grassroots movement of free volunteer-led walking tours for people to observe, reflect, share, question, and re-imagine the places in which they live, work, and play.

This year, Corin will lead two walking tours to highlight various projects along the waterfront, including: Sherbourne Common and its stormwater management system; the transformation of the Port Lands into a vibrant new community that mitigates floods; the integration of mature tree canopies along the Water’s Edge Promenade; the revitalization of Queens Quay West; and the iconic WaveDecks and their contribution to the local aquatic habitat. 

DTAH has had the privilege of shaping Toronto’s waterfront over the past 20 years. Join Corin’s Jane’s Walk to learn more about Toronto's hidden infrastructures and better understand the numerous considerations that shape the design of our parks and public spaces!

Landscapes as Infrastructure: Welcome to Toronto's Waterfront

When: Friday, May 2nd at 5 p.m. and Saturday, May 3rd at 11 a.m.

Duration: ~ 1.5 hours

Where: Start at Sherbourne Common Park North (by the blue park sign) and end at Simcoe WaveDeck. Corin will be wearing a bright red scarf and holding a teal water bottle! (see map here). 

Read more about Jane’s Walks: www.janeswalkfestivalto.com/

“Observed Invisibility: Landscape Architecture and its Parallels to the Experience of Being a Woman” is featured in the Spring 2025 issue of Landscapes | Paysages! In response to the theme of this issue, TerreFemme, the women landscape architects at DTAH express their shared experiences and observations in this collaborative article. 

The article explores the intersection between womanhood and landscape architecture by highlighting the unseen and underappreciated labour behind both domains. Naturalized environments, ground conditions, and subsurface components are meticulously designed to serve pivotal functions in our society – yet the bulk of landscape architecture work often goes unnoticed by the general public. Through this discussion, we hope to bring recognition to these invisible forces that influence our day-to-day lives. 

Thank you, Landscapes | Paysages, for the opportunity to explore this topic and share our observations. We’re honoured to have our article featured in such a thought-provoking issue.

Read the full article: www.csla-aapc.ca/landscapes-paysages/landscapes-paysages-magazine