2025 CSLA Awards to OALA Members
Kìwekì Point – Big River Landscape (Ottawa, ON)
Janet Rosenberg & Studio (JRS)
Janet Rosenberg, AALA, AAPQ, APALA, BCSLA, SALA, OALA, FCSLA, FASLA
Category: Medium-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (1 to 5 ha)
The design of Kìwekì Point revolves around one core objective: to strengthen connections. Formerly called Nepean Point, the park was renamed through the process to ‘Kìwekì’ an Algonquin word meaning “returning to one’s homeland.” Located adjacent to the National Gallery, the park invites people to explore the Capital Region and reconnect with the area’s layered natural and cultural heritage, shaped by the Ottawa River.The design includes: the new Pìdàban pedestrian bridge that connects the park to Major’s Hill Park and the city beyond; an accessible promenade with dramatic river views; interpretive elements; and new sculptural elements and architectural feature, such as Whispering Point, which provides shelter and a place to gather and to experience panoramic views on two levels. Sustainable and resilient design strategies have been woven through all aspects of the design, including an innovative Ha-Ha feature, meadow areas, native and biodiverse planting and trees planted in silva cells to provide integral stormwater management. Custom design elements and lighting all contribute to the experience of the space as a restrained, yet powerful landscape deeply grounded in a sense of place.
Love Park
CCxA Architectes paysagistes
Marc Hallé, OALA, FCSLA
Category: Small-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (up to 1 ha)
Love Park is an endeavor to break from the grid and assert an open space character that reinforces Toronto’s evolving landscape specificity, a unique signature to express the spirit of the city. A new metropolitan icon to capture the Toronto brand, Love Park also serves as a local park for a diverse mix of residents, workers, visitors and tourists in the burgeoning Waterfront neighbourhood. A space of simplicity and grandeur, Love Park accommodates a myriad of flexible and open-ended uses while sustaining its own conceptual integrity and personality over time. The interplay between clearing and tree cover, sun and shade, as well as seeing and being seen all combine to make a green oasis of quiet yet stimulating repose. This breathing room in the city is qualified by a looseness in layout that promotes freshness and flexibility. Unobstructed sight lines through clearings and trees across the park, to the surrounding towers, as well as the harbour to the south, promote safety without imposing an overly rigid structure of occupancy. A pavilion trellis of intersecting arcs reinforces the geometry of the park layout, its lace structure becoming more pronounced by vines over time.
National War Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (St. John's, NL)
Mills & Wright Landscape Architecture Inc.
Matthew Mills, OALA-Inactive, APALA, CSLA
Category: Small-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (up to 1 ha)
Unveiled on July 1, 1924, the War Memorial in St. John’s, a national historic site, honours Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who served in WWI. For its 100th anniversary, a project led by landscape architects included the repatriation of a fallen Unknown Newfoundland Soldier from France, the design of a tomb to honourably house the remains, and the redesign of the broader site to enhance accessibility, sustainability and heritage preservation. Improvements included preserving historic granite elements and sculptures, improving accessibility, adding historically accurate metalwork and enhancing public space. Invasive plant species were replaced with native, improving biodiversity; historic planting beds were reintroduced, featuring flowers symbolic of wartime commemoration. At the project’s heart, a tomb for an Unknown Newfoundland Soldier, crafted from Canadian black granite and labradorite from Labrador, is adorned with a bronze bouquet of forget-me-nots, a symbol of remembrance. This is Canada’s second tomb for an Unknown Soldier, making Canada the only country in the world to receive such an honour. This rare project artfully blends old and new, creating a resilient, inclusive, and commemorative space that respects Newfoundland and Labrador’s wartime heritage, solidifying it as an important cultural landscape for many generations to come.
Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville de Québec (Québec City, QC)
Stantec + Lemay + Ville de Québec
Gérald Pau, AAPQ, CSLA, André Plante, AAPQ, CSLA, Marie-Eve Parent, OALA, AAPQ, CSLA, Jean Philippe André, AAPQ, CSLA
Category: Small-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (up to 1 ha)
Quebec City’s new City Hall project is located within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Vieux-Québec, a unique architectural ensemble that is foundational to the city’s identity. The architectural component focuses on the historicity of the site: the sense of place permeates the entire design of the new plaza, with the aim of creating a metaphysical architecture. The site forges and underscores a solemn bond between City Hall and the Notre-Dame de Québec basilica. Aside from enabling extensive progress on questions of universal accessibility, pedestrian safety and sustainability, the sensitive conceptual process made it possible, despite a host of technical challenges, to preserve and highlight the site’s structural and forest heritage. The site and its immediate surroundings now feature a significant vegetated area including 17 trees and their ample canopy. The creation of a flat zone with a significant permeable area, allowing water percolation, is among the project’s innovations. The design is adaptable to the seasons and a range of activities, creating a vibrant social oasis in tune with a busy annual calendar of events. The participatory design process allowed the local community to express its needs and aspirations, inspiring people to eagerly embrace the completed space.
Riverside Ranch (Bayside, NB)
Brackish Design Studio Inc.
Matthew A.J. Brown, OALA, APALA, CSLA
Category: Residential Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect
On a former quarry site along the St. Croix River in New Brunswick, Riverside Ranch is a project that marries architecture and landscape into a “coastal farm” vision for a family of two humans, two Leonberger dogs and several horses. The landscape masterplan, the first phase of which was implemented in 2023, focused on the main house and surrounding landscape. The full plan includes restoration of a quarry, reimagining the site into a series of trails, vantage points and program elements like a horse barn and maintenance area. Landscape design elements are used to integrate the building with site, with features including a wood “wharf” boardwalk that continues through the house, becoming a cantilevered deck on the river-site, and a courtyard garden with stonework that recalls a rocky riparian shoreline. A simple yet dramatic plant palette of native grasses and multi-stem birches evokes agrarian and river landscapes while softening the architectural moves. The landscape architects worked closely with the architects and builders to ensure the house was respectfully sited with a generous buffer from an existing watercourse, and preserves existing wooded areas – ensuring the integrity of a varied site for the property owner’s enjoyment and lifestyle.
The Sara Jackman Playground (Toronto, ON)
PLANT Architect Inc.
Eric Klaver, OALA, CSLA
Category: Small-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (up to 1 ha)
The Sara Jackman Playground is the new outdoor play area at the University of Toronto’s Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study (JICS) Lab School. What was formerly a flat, compact patch of asphalt is now a hub of varied, multi-level play spaces. To a remarkable extent, this new, much greener playground puts key principles of the school’s pedagogy into practice. JICS prioritizes outdoor play that allows each child to build a relationship with nature; open-ended creative play that involves constructing or pretending; and what is often called ‘risky’ play: freedom to get wet, to get muddy, to test one’s physical prowess, within reasonable limits. A new ramp not only improves accessibility but also introduces child-size nooks along its outer edge and invites kids to climb through its splayed pickets. Play zones range from a “secret sensory garden” filled with plants of contrasting colours, textures and fragrances to a bright orange, boomerang-shaped climbing structure. Other destinations include a sand-and-water-play zone, a figure-8 tricycle track, a wood mound that becomes a winter sliding slope and an all-weather story-time area with a leaf-shaped canopy. Even a colourfully shingled shed for storing play equipment doubles as climbable play space.
Sp’akw’us Feather Park (Squamish, BC)
Hapa Collaborative & Anchor QEA
Joseph Fry, OALA, BCSLA, CSLA
Category: Medium-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (1 to 5 ha)
Named to honour the eagle, sp’akw’us, that soars higher than all birds, Sp’akw’us Feather Park has transformed Squamish’s waterfront. The park transforms a once inaccessible and contaminated former pulp mill into a vibrant 11-acre (approx. 4.45 hectares) public waterfront. Climate resilience, connection to place and Squamish Nation culture revitalization are at the heart of this project. Located at the head of Howe Sound and with views towards The Chief, Squamish’s famed granite monolith, the site’s stunning, natural beauty has drawn people here since time immemorial. The project celebrates its community’s needs and its spectacular setting, while addressing shoreline vulnerabilities to climate change. Defined by two constructed beaches and a tidal marsh, the park welcomes all – people, fish, and wildlife – to the water’s edge. Local, characteristic natural elements including granite boulders, basalt flagstone and large timber benches capture a simple, place-based aesthetic. Honouring the culture of Squamish Nation was a holistic driver: a playground co-designed with Indigenous youth, cultural gardens and local art are some of many Sḵwx̱wú7mesh cultural elements woven into the site. Collaboration among landscape architects, the developer Matthews West, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, local community groups and the District of Squamish drove the project’s success.
Square Viger Redevelopment (Blocks I and II) (Montréal, QC)
NIPPAYSAGE
Mathieu Casavant, AAPQ, APALA, OALA, CSLA
Category: Medium-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect
The Square Viger redevelopment is a prime example of a project in which the landscape architect managed multiple constraints and challenges in an urban setting, while coordinating all professionals at every phase. The project hinged on the delicate process of consulting everyone involved and harmonizing their concerns. Ultimately, this process led to a project that revives an iconic site while balancing commemoration, greening and modernization. The renewed Square Viger is a unifying, open, accessible, green, inviting and safe space. A café with a large patio, where lively community events are held, is closely linked to the adjoining floral landscape, interactive fountains and the artistic legacy of Charles Daudelin. Inspired by the historic Viger Garden, the square boasts diverse vegetation, numerous trees, “hypernatural” gardens evoking Nordic landscapes and rain gardens that enhance biodiversity. The site is an inspiration for reflections beyond design and planning: it addresses issues surrounding the conservation of an artistic legacy, inclusiveness and urban safety.
Vaughan Complete Streets Guide (Vaughan, ON)
DTAH
Brent Raymond, OALA, FCSLA
Category: Planning and Analysis | Large-Scale Design
Vaughan is a rapidly growing city with diverse land uses and a complex network of streets that range in size, character and function. Like many post-war communities, Vaughan’s streets have been designed to prioritize the automobile. Emerging policy objectives recognize this imbalance, calling 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 is the city’s primary resource for street design for practitioners, decision-makers and the public. 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. To ensure the city’s ecological, social and economic objectives are achieved, the document establishes design checklists and performance metrics. These values are foundational to the writing of the document, elevating the design and implementation of streets in Vaughan. Leveraging a new approach to street design process, the guide helps deliver a safer, healthier, more inclusive and sustainable Vaughan.
Yarmouth Main St. Streetscape Phase 2 (Yarmouth, NS)
Fathom Studio
Devin Segal, OALA, APALA, CSLA
Category: Small-Scale Public Landscapes Designed by a Landscape Architect (up to 1 ha)
The Yarmouth Main Street Streetscape Phase 2 project reimagines the relationship between people and their Main Street, transforming it into a vibrant and inclusive public space. The design celebrates Yarmouth’s unique setting, drawing attention to the town’s character while enhancing its appeal to both visitors and residents. Inspired by the region’s distinctive identity, the streetscape employs a locally grounded design language that reinforces Yarmouth’s sense of place and creates an engaging, memorable experience. By listening to the community’s needs and aspirations, the project represents a collaborative effort to build a space that fosters connection, pride and vitality. This project exemplifies how innovative landscape architecture can reinvigorate downtown areas, support economic development and instill civic pride. Yarmouth’s Main Street serves as a model for municipalities aiming to transform their public spaces into meaningful places that attract businesses, encourage tourism, and enrich local life. Through clever design details and a strong sense of purpose, this streetscape revitalization highlights the potential of placemaking to connect people to their community, inspire change and showcase the power of thoughtful urban design.
