The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that Elise Shelley has been appointed to a three-year term as director of the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) program, effective July 1, 2022. 

Recently promoted from Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream to Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, the award-winning landscape architect has been with the Faculty for 19 years, having joined it as a sessional lecturer in 2003. Shelley has taught graduate-level studio design, planting design, site technology and professional practice courses in both the Architecture and Landscape Architecture programs, and is a thesis advisor for MLA candidates. 

“I see my primary role in the coming year being based on service to Daniels, specifically MLA students and faculty,” says Shelley. “This coming year will see us fully transitioning back to a situation that will be fundamentally altered from pre-pandemic learning. The experiences we have shared and witnessed in the world over the past few years will impact teaching, public programming, events and interaction within the Faculty, and I look forward to stewarding and facilitating these new and renewed directions for the MLA program.” 

A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where she acquired her Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees, Shelley has also served as an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo.

In addition to her academic roles, she is currently the Director of Landscape Architecture at the interdisciplinary design practice gh3*. Among the projects that she has worked on at the firm are the widely acclaimed Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool in Edmonton (Canada’s first chemical-free outdoor swimming pool, it features water cleansed via stone, gravel, sand and botanic filtering processes), the elegantly austere Stormwater Treatment Facility in Toronto’s West Don Lands (where the treatment plant and reservoir are linked by a striking paving feature) and the Galbraith Building Landscape and Forecourt on U of T’s downtown campus. 

Distinctive hardscaping and a rich variety of plantings distinguish the Galbraith Building Landscape and Forecourt by gh3*. New MLA program director Elise Shelley is the interdisciplinary design firm’s Director of Landscape Architecture.

Shelley’s own research focuses on material innovation, user-focused landscapes and universal design, while her private gardens and public spaces exemplify these interests, merging dynamic elements and space-making strategically and sustainably. 

“As a practitioner and an academic, and as an architect as well as a landscape architect, I’m interested in interdisciplinary directions that work to emphasize and clarify the significance and distinction of each field as we move forward in increasingly complex urban contexts,” she says. 

In this regard, Shelley adds, the Daniels Faculty’s MLA program is unique among academic offerings and well suited to addressing the social and environmental challenges of the future. 

“I know of no other program that shares physical and intellectual space with programs of architecture, urban design, visual arts and forestry,” she says. “The position of our MLA program among these other fields of study creates a unique opportunity for learning from our peers, neighbours and colleagues, both for students and faculty.” 

An unusually attractive piece of public infrastructure, the Stormwater Treatment Facility in Toronto’s West Don Lands is defined by its geometric forms, as this overhead shot of the paving feature linking the treatment plant and reservoir demonstrates.

Shelley succeeds Liat Margolis as director of the MLA program. Margolis had overseen it since 2017. 

Established in 1998, the MLA program was last reviewed in 2018, when it was granted a five-year term of accreditation.