BACKGROUND TO THE PORTFOLIOS

CANADIAN LANDSCAPES PORTFOLIOS

Walk with a good friend, Ville de Mont-Royal (QC)

Canadian Landscapes Portfolio Initiative background

The Canadian Landscape Portfolio (CLP) initiative consists of a web-based digital photographic collection intended to illustrate Canada’s diversity of landscapes by provinces and territories. Compiled from CSLA members’ submissions from around the country, the 2015-16 edition will highlight the various meaningful or “Significant Landscapes” mentioned in the Canadian Landscape Charter, including the ones too often forgotten because of their apparent unimportance. The goal of the initiative is not necessarily about finding the most picturesque, rare or exhilarating place but more about capturing those significant moments experienced in a specific landscape. The first edition (2015-16) of the CLP could then be considered as an illustrated addition to the Canadian Landscape Charter as seen through the eyes of landscape architects from across the country, an expression of a vision where all landscapes become important, meaningful, and worth taking time to admire, because they are part of our lives.

If the “Significant Landscapes” edition is the launch of the Initiative, the following editions will aim to draw pan-Canadian portraits of “’Designed Landscapes” and, ultimately, of “Dreamed Landscapes”. For professionals whose profession is to intervene on “landscapes”, it is therefore a progression through the “landscape that we experience” and the landscape “that we design”, to that where “we would like to live”.

The Canadian Landscape Portfolio, following the CLC, is based on the precepts that landscapes are:

Of public interest, entailing various dimensions ranging from culture to ecology and economy.
Favourable to viable economic activities with appropriate means of interventions.
Integral to the Canadian identity and its diverse cultures.
Naturally in constant change, with many under economic stresses.
A major contributor to the quality of life for all people living in all types of settings

But, as mentioned in 2012 by the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), those precepts are not always perceived as applicable to all landscapes. How can a specific site or open space be valued if its impact on our everyday life is not seen because it is not categorized as sufficiently “cultural”, “historical”, “natural” or “aesthetic”.

The reality is that many landscapes are just perceived as “filling empty areas between buildings, housing developments, highways and urban centres, or being vague sectors capable of managing themselves”. In other words, they are often described as vacant areas with little value, just waiting to be developed, to be rendered useful with some identifiable (mostly economic or functional) functions.

If the Canadian Landscape Charter intent is to connect a larger diversity of landscapes to our quality of life, even the vernacular ones, then the Canadian Landscape Portfolio is to create an easily accessible collection of images from across Canada that illustrates how and why those landscapes are of some significance. And it only seems natural to propose this exercise to Canadian landscape architects who spend their career intervening on all types of landscapes.

To illustrate the CLC focus on Canada’s rich landscape diversity, the Canadian Landscape Portfolio initiative seeks to compile a digital Gallery of ten (10) Collections representing rsch province or territory. It will then be possible to produce some kind of portrait illustrating "how and what" landscapes touch the Canadian landscape archotects having participated in the Initiative.

PORTFOLIOS' EDITIONS

Significant landscapes