Monday 25th November 2024, 13:00 – 14:00

A Landscape Character-Based Solution: Developing Sustainable Responses to Landscape Dynamics in the Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) is a typical dynamic area of human-nature interaction in South China for more than a thousand year. Also known as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, it has been one of the most rapid economic growing and urbanising area in world since the Chinese economic reform in 1980s. In the context of global environmental crises, nominated ecological and agricultural space is well protected from urban development in China while wider ‘ordinary’ space outside those conservations is left behind. This is a gap could be filled by the landscape character assessment which aims to make one landscape different from another, rather than value it as better or worse.

In this seminar, the research will be discussed from regional scale zooming into local scale by revealing land character dynamics of the PRD in the past, assessing landscape character and landscape capacity of a case study at present and providing sustainable response to urban development for future. 

Sijie (John) Wang is a PhD student of landscape architecture in ECA, the University of Edinburgh. Currently he works on developing sustainable responses to rapid urbanisation impacts on landscape character dynamics of the Pearl River Delta in China by multi-scale and interdisciplinary studies.

Monday 28th October 2024, 13:00 – 14:00

The role of university campus landscape in student’s health and well-being

University students frequently experience high levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and various other mental health challenges. A comprehensive review of existing research has been conducted to examine how campus landscapes impact students’ mental health, with the aim of identifying knowledge gaps and providing recommendations for future research directions.

This seminar will discuss how students at Heriot-Watt University utilize the campus landscape, exploring the relationship between their activities and the health benefits they receive through a geo-location-based analysis. Additionally, the types and characteristics of university landscapes that are more preferred by students, which contribute to mental health-promoting activities, will be examined.

Furthermore, an analysis of students’ activities using the non-participatory BlueHealth Behavioural Assessment Tool (BBAT) on the university campus landscape will be presented. This analysis aims to evaluate the more popular and less-frequented locations within the space and to identify differences in the spatial distribution of activities.

Koorosh Aghabozorgi is a PhD researcher in Urban Studies at the Institute for Place, Environment, and Society at Heriot-Watt University, where he explores the impact of campus landscape types and characteristics on students’ health and well-being.

Monday 30th September 2024, 13:00 – 14:00

Empirical agent-based model to simulate bike-sharing deployment strategies

Bike-sharing systems (BSS) have emerged as a new transport service that proliferates in cities worldwide, characterised by their convenience and flexibility. However, their role as a part of the public transport system is ambiguous and, according to literature, biased towards affluent populations with already accessible transport options.

Within this context, and the help of trip data from a now defunct BSS in Manchester, I propose the creation of an empirical agent-based model to explore the effects of deployment decisions. The model has a data-driven approach where the rules and agent’s behaviours are elicited from observed mobility patterns. Relying exclusively on open data sources, my aim is to shed a light on the possibilities of evidence-based transport decisions.

This presentation summarises the work and findings from my PhD where I endeavour to integrate sparse socioeconomic, spatial and transport data for a decision-making tool that highlights the importance of accessible transport resources.

Dr Antonio Ross-Perez is a Research Associate in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) and the OPENspace research centre where he investigates the impact of green and blue space on public health. His previous work focuses on the use of secondary data for spatial analysis, accessible transport, and agent-based modelling.

Thursday 11th April 2024, 13:00-14:00

Using secondary data to analyse the mental health benefits of forests’ interventions in low-income communities

As urban populations grow, grappling with escalating mental health challenges and non-communicable diseases, this presentation delves into a study exploring the health-enhancing potential of woodland areas, with a particular focus on underserved communities. Utilising secondary data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study, the research assesses the impact of the Woods In and Around Towns (WIAT) program. WIAT is dedicated to enhancing community well-being by revitalising underutilised woodlands in economically disadvantaged urban locales. The study evaluated the geographical reach of the program’s benefits in terms of mental health outcomes, the timeline over which these advantages manifest, their longevity, and variations in impact across different demographics. It aimed to shed light on urban forests’ crucial role in bolstering urban health, offering key insights to inform policy-making and practical measures to maximise public and environmental health outcomes. However, confronting unexpected findings prompted a pivotal shift in our inquiry: If the expected benefits are not realised, what could be the possible reasons for it? Thus, this presentation not only dissects the effectiveness of urban forestry interventions but also explores the factors contributing to the absence of anticipated positive outcomes, paving the way for a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in enhancing urban green spaces for community health.

Dr Carolina Mayen Huerta is an Associate Researcher at OPENspace, where she is actively involved in exploring the impact of greenspace interventions on public health outcomes. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Melbourne, where her research centered on the resilience-enhancing role of urban green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also holds a Master’s in Development Practice from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Lewis Perry Award for integrating environmental considerations into her capstone project. Throughout her career, Carolina has made significant contributions to international development organisations such as IFC and the Inter-American Development Bank, and she is currently a consultant at the World Bank. Her work at the Bank mainly revolves around research and development, with a particular focus on environmental and gender-related initiatives.

Tuesday 12th March 2024, 13:00-14:00

Environmental support for flourishing in older age

Supportive outdoor environments can enable people to remain healthy and active in older age, improving quality of life. Yet older adults continue to face difficulties accessing physical environments. This seminar presents emerging findings from a longitudinal study of older people (aged 50+) living in Scotland, UK, 2021-23, and explores how physical environments support people to undertake the ‘personal projects’ (Little, 1983) that enable them to flourish. Personal projects are self-generated and purpose-oriented activities an individual is doing or planning to do, and range from important everyday routines to ambitious, long-term endeavours. Drawing on data from 45 participants, we describe the types of personal projects participants reported as important and what aspects of the environment were associated with project enjoyment and positive outcome. Projects that involved social engagement with other people and their local community were valued highly. Concerns about safety and fears of falling or an accident were however a significant deterrent to spending time in natural environments. Overall, the easier the local outdoor environment made it for people to carry out their personal projects, the higher their quality of life; this is particularly important in a post-COVID world. We examine the significance of these findings in the context of policies and frameworks concerning ‘age-friendly communities’ to address the role of the physical environment in not only supporting people to achieve the necessary tasks of daily living adequately, but also in supporting people and communities to flourish in later life.

Dr Caroline Pearce is a Research Fellow in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) and the Advanced Care Research Centre. Her current research explores the role of outdoor environments in supporting people to live well and flourish in older age. Previously, Caroline was a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge from 2019-2021 and King’s College London from 2017-2019. She completed her PhD on recovery following bereavement at The Open University in 2016.

Tuesday 13th February 2024, 13:00-14:00

Sharing, Connecting, Decolonising knowledge(s) across urban centres

Dr Penny Travlou’s seminar will look at Sharing, Connecting, Decolonising knowledge(s) across urban centres in the global periphery.

Through a series of reflections, this presentation will look at knowledge production with urban communities in a transglobal research context merging together fieldwork in Medellin (Colombia) and Athens (Greece). The question that I pose here is how can care and collective creativity enhance the wellbeing and resilience of communities at-risk in times of crisis? The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of care and community art infrastructures as a common good that enables urban disaffected communities across the global periphery to withstand multiple adversities, actively reclaim their city and make it more hospitable, sociable and secure. Focusing on the South American concept of buen vivir (‘good living’) realised through practices of collaboration, solidarity and sharing to meet the everyday needs and achieve the wellbeing of individuals, communities and lived-in environments, I will discuss how indigenous decolonial knowledges and practices can be translated into the contemporary urban landscape and enacted by local communities.

Dr Penny Travlou is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography and Theory (ESALA). Her research is transdisciplinary focusing on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, emerging networks, feminist methodologies, critical landscape theory, decolonial epistemologies and ethnography. She has been involved in international research projects funded by the EU and UK Research Councils. Since 2011, she does ethnographic research on collaborative practices in emerging networks (i.e. independent art organisations, collaborative economy initiatives, translocal migrants and activists). For the past eight years, she has collaborated with art organisations in Colombia and most recently, in the African continent, to understand commons from a decolonial perspective and look at commoning practices within artistic forms while understanding the specificities of the commons rooted in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts. She is the Programme Director of the new MSc in Architecture, Landscape and Environment at ESALA and the Co-Chair of the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group at ECA.

Tuesday 23rd January 2024, 13:00-14:00

Harnessing the Power of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Landscape Planning

This research explores how landscape changes impact well-being in the peri-urban context of Harku Municipality, Estonia. Using innovative methods, the study identifies specific landscape elements linked to enhanced well-being. By combining Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) and Cultural Ecosystem Service (CESs) frameworks, it reveals relationships between landscape types and cultural values. Through scenario-based assessments, experts and residents’ surveys, the study identifies satisfaction hotspots in villages within certain landscape belts, unveiling threats and trends resulting from landscape dynamics. This research offers insights for sustainable peri-urban planning, emphasizing the crucial role of nature conservation for both resident well-being and ecosystem health.

Fiona Nevzati is a PhD candidate in landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, specializing in ecosystem services-based landscape planning in the urban-rural gradient. She is also a visiting researcher at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Her research focuses on developing innovative and sustainable landscape solutions, exploring the balance between human interventions and natural environments. Merging theory and practice, Fiona aims to contribute to resilient landscapes while integrating the principles of ecosystem services. Her interest extends to teaching and working with students, and the areas of data interpretation and visualizations.

Tuesday 21st November 2023, 13:00-14:00

Pedagogy, Projects & Policy: Perspectives on the Research-Led Studio

This talk will reflect on some the different forms that researching through the design studio can take. From the short-intensive research engagement, which produces both discrete research products and heightens student learning trajectories in new and productive ways through the engagement with particular user groups. To the ‘partnering’ of a series of design studios with a large, funded and interdisciplinary research project over a significant period, with potential benefits for both. And finally to the approach where the studio is the principal vehicle of research and inquiry of its members, intersecting with societal issues which are often universal but play-out in different ways in different places. Reflections will be offered on studio ‘intersections with policy’ across a range of scales and contexts from built-environment policy at a national level to the more particular concerns of third sector organisations. A range of methods of engagement with people will be critically presented in the pursuit of outcomes which foster effective learning and knowledge exchange beyond the four walls of the studio-space.

Iain Scott is a Senior Lecturer in ESALA and has been a design tutor at Edinburgh College of Art since 1996. He is interested in a compelling and fundamental relationship between his teaching and research to the extent that the boundaries between the two disciplines become indistinct. His design studios at ESALA are often interdisciplinary, engaging students of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in diagnosing problems and identifying design solutions which add to the knowledge canon in particular subject domains and geographical places. Students become ‘active researchers’ often working with interdisciplinary research teams and particular user groups, employing innovative research methods and co-design practices in the pursuit of original design solutions. Research typically revolves around the relationship between people and the built-environment and has in the past engaged children, older people and people with autism and cognitive impairment.

Tuesday 24th October 2023, 13:00-14:00

Patterns of use and perceptions of blue spaces in Warsaw. From participatory research to planning and design recommendation

In this seminar, Anna Wilczyńska and Oleksandr Karasov will introduce the Participatory Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method as a practical tool for studying  how people use and perceive blue spaces in Warsaw. In their study they explored which types of blue spaces people like and avoid, what specific spots are highly regarded, and the reasons behind these preferences.

Linking results to the methodology, the seminar will illustrate various aspects of data collection, preparation, analysis, and interpretation. These insights are not only valuable for understanding blue spaces in Warsaw but also for their wider applicability in diverse urban contexts, to address the unique characteristics and social-environmental importance of blue spaces.

Anna Wilczyńska is a landscape architect and lecturer at the Estonian University of Life Sciences (EMU), and post-doc researcher at the Åbo Akademii University in Turku. Her work focuses on researching and designing sustainable urban landscapes, with an emphasis on human-nature relationships, social and environmental justice, public participation in design and research, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

Oleksandr Karasov is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD at the Estonian University of Life Sciences. Oleksandr applies social media and remote sensing data to study cultural ecosystem services, people-nature relationships, and, currently, cross-border human mobility within the BORDERSPACE project (led by Dr. Olle Järv, University of Helsinki).

Tuesday 26th September 2023, 13:00-14:00

Introducing the BlueHealth Toolbox: Linking environment, climate and health

In this seminar, OPENspace Co-Director Prof Simon Bell will introduce the BlueHealth Toolbox: a validated, tested and free resource for urban planners and designers to use when working on new blue space projects. Having access to quality blue environments can benefit public health and wellbeing. The BlueHealth Toolbox has been created to help maximise these benefits while protecting the environment.

The toolbox is particularly useful for conducting before and after assessments of a blue space, so that the success of a project can be evaluated. By collecting information about places and the people using or affected by them, blue space assessments provide evidence to enhance urban planning and design. This can help to tackle public health challenges linked to disease, mental health and climate change. 

The BlueHealth Toolbox was created as part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded BlueHealth project – a pan-European research initiative that investigated the links between urban blue spaces, climate and health.

Tuesday 16th May 2023, 13:00-14:00

ECA Boardroom, L.05 (North East Building, Edinburgh College of Art)

Speaker: Dr Francisca Lima (PhD, FHEA) is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where she teaches history and theory of landscape architecture, and where she directs the Master in Landscape Architecture Programme. She is also one of the research articles’ editor at JoLA – Journal of Landscape Architecture.

Francisca’s research interests range from perception of landscape, to urban decline and green spaces in relation to community engagement and wellbeing.

Since 2005 she has been collaborating in research projects with LEAF Research Center and the Philosophy Research Center of the University of Lisbon. Francisca has also co-chaired the conferences, Shrinking Cities I Expanding Landscapes (2013) and Landscape and Life (2017), with the support of the University of Edinburgh and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation respectively, among other sponsors, and has been a guest co-editor of the Shrinking Cities I Expanding Landscapes’s special issue, Landscape Research Journal (2017).

Francisca has also worked as an independent designer since 2009 and she has completed her degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Lisbon, with a final dissertation focusing on the theme of Landscape Aesthetics (20/20).

Seminar Title: Three Gardens at Sight: Monet, Jekyll and Jarman

Between 1989 and 1990, and after receiving his HIV positive diagnosis, Derek Jarman – British film director, artist and writer – decided to embark on two related tasks: the development of his garden at Dungeness and the writing of a diary entitled “Modern Nature”. Under the cover of a gardening diary, Jarman explores his hidden childhood memories, the tension with the press and government, the memories of his dying friends and the prospect of long-term illness and blindness.  Stitching all these threads together, as a perfect background, is the development of his garden in waves of growth and demise, always either physically present or dreamt of.

In a similar path of constant personal endeavour and escape from fragility are the gardens of the famous British gardener and horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll – Munstead Wood – and Monet’s Giverny. In this presentation, these three gardens will be analysed and put in dialogue to explore how they have been made to perform the role of sight-full refuges for these designers and renown artists of their time.

Tuesday 2nd May 2023, 13:00-14:00

ECA Boardroom, L.05 (North East Building, Edinburgh College of Art)

Speaker: Dr Harry Smith is Professor in Global Urbanism at The Urban Institute, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He has over 30 years of experience working with urban design and development issues, having worked as an architect and planner in the Global North and then become an academic engaging in urban research in Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of his research has focused on issues in so-called ‘informal’ settlements – ranging from housing, through access to land, to community-based disaster risk management – and often taking an action-research approach linked to achieving changes in policy and practice. He has published widely on planning and housing in the rapidly urbanizing world, waterfront regeneration, place-keeping, and disaster risk management.

Dr Soledad Garcia Ferrari is Professor in Global Urbanism and Resilience at the University of Edinburgh. Professionally qualified in Architecture and Urbanism in Uruguay, Professor Garcia Ferrari’s research focuses on current processes of urban development and regeneration in Latin America and Europe. Soledad has extensive expertise in sustainable planning in growing Latin American cities, with a focus on community-empowerment, participatory and co-creation processes in the production and management of the built environment, with particular interest in increasing resilience and adaptation to climate change in the most vulnerable urban and peri-urban areas. She is currently leading research focused on community-led climate change-related risk management in Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador https://www.globalurbancollaborative.org. Soledad is International Dean for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She also Dean for Latin America for the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies.

Seminar Title: Place-keeping as disaster risk management in low-income neighbourhoods in Latin America

This seminar will reflect on the relevance of the concept of place-keeping to certain types of disaster risk management, based on recent experiences in co-producing landslide and flood risk management in low-income neighbourhoods in Latin America.

Place-keeping was defined around 15 years ago as long-term and responsive management of open space which ensures continuing social, environmental and economic quality and benefits a place brings in the present and into the future. The seminar will first set out the implications of the concept of place-keeping in terms of governance of open space, reflecting on the shift it represents in decision-making from (mostly local) government to a full range of stakeholders. Particular emphasis will be made on the user-centred model where user-based organisations (from community groups to NGOs) are involved taking on co-responsibility in open space management. This reflection will draw on European examples of open space management from explored through EU-funded research undertaken in 2008/12.

The seminar will then present and discuss recent examples of co-produced disaster risk management strategies in Latin America in which community-based monitoring, improvement and maintenance of open space within their neighbourhood have been key to risk reduction. This ranges from self-built neighbourhoods in Colombia and Brazil where reducing the risk of small landslides has involved defining levels of responsibility for open space improvement and maintenance on a sliding scale from household, through community, to local government – to low-income neighbourhoods in Mexico where community actions from street and drain cleaning to implementation of sustainable drainage have been identified as contributing factors to reducing flood risk. These activities, conducted through action-research undertaken by the presenters in collaboration with community organisations and other actors, have involved residents in forms of place-keeping that are relevant to disaster risk management, but also have wider implications for re-thinking how co-responsibilities can be defined in relation to an integrated management of open space and disaster risk reduction.   

Tuesday 25th April 2023, 13:00-14:00

ECA Boardroom, L.05 (North East Building, Edinburgh College of Art)

Speaker: Dr Gergo Baranyi is a Research Associate in Environment and Health at the Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health, Department of Geography. His research interests include studying the contextual and social determinants of mental health and healthy ageing, exploring how environmental conditions contribute to health inequalities, and applying the life-course approach in neighbourhood effects research. Gergo completed a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh, and he holds a Master in Psychology (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) and a Master in Public Health (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin). Since 2020, he has been working as a technical consultant to the World Health Organization on projects addressing occupational and environmental health.

Seminar Title: Neighbourhood Across the Life Course and Healthy Ageing

The world’s population is rapidly ageing, resulting in growing numbers of older adults and their greater proportion in the population. Providing new insights into how the places in which we live and grow older can be best designed to support healthy ageing has emerged as an important research and policy priority. While previous work has identified social and physical features of neighbourhoods which might support people to age well, evidence is seriously limited by study design and poor understanding of the temporal relationship between health and place. This talk will first introduce the life course framework, and outline how it can be integrated in research aiming to understand the long-term impact of environments experienced throughout life on health and wellbeing. Research findings presented during this talk are based on the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, a unique dataset that captured the lifetime environmental circumstances of a cohort of older people, alongside detailed individual-level information, including markers of biological, cognitive and brain ageing.

Tuesday 14th March 2023, 13:00-14:00

ECA Boardroom, L.05 (North East Building, Edinburgh College of Art)

Speaker: Dr Stephen Malden, a Research Fellow based within the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP), University of Edinburgh. Stephen has been based at the University in a research capacity for seven years, and has mainly conducted health services research, systematic reviews/meta-analyses, and the evaluation of community-based behavioural interventions. Stephen joined the GroundsWell consortium in March 2022 as a member of work-package three,  and will be working with communities to co-design and evaluate small-scale interventions. 

Seminar Title: The GroundsWell Consortium: Transforming Urban Green and Blue Space for Population Health

Exposures to urban green and blue spaces have the potential to positively influence health and wellbeing, particularly in the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). However, maximising the benefits of such exposures requires that access to such spaces is maximised across society. The GroundsWell consortium aims to use community-engaged and data-informed systems transformation of urban green and blue space for the benefit of population health. The consortium consists of seven interlinked work packages, each working towards the collective long-term aim of reducing NCDs through the appropriate utilisation of urban green and blue space. The consortium will consider impacts at both population and individual level, and use approaches such as co-design and citizen science to increase the sustainability of any interventions that are developed within GroundsWell. This seminar will provide an overview of the GroundWell Consortium, including a summary of the work to be carried out within each of the work packages across the five-year study period. 

Friday 24th February 2023, 13:00-14:00

Forresthill, Room FH_3.D02

Speaker: Dr Paul Jepson, Head of Innovation at CreditNature Ltd, a nature fintech company developing analytics and nature impact tokens to ‘unlock’ investment in rewilding and nature recovery.

Paul formerly directed the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at Oxford University and held senior research fellowships with the Said Business School and Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment. Paul started his career working on urban nature recovery projects in Manchester and Shrewsbury. He is a leading thinker in the European rewilding movement and author of ‘Rewilding: the radical new science of ecological recovery’.

Seminar Title: Urban Rewilding: new vision or repacking of the old?

The term rewilding has entered the mainstream and is influencing thinking on urban green space management. In this seminar we will position rewilding in relation to approaches to urban nature and biodiversity protection that emerged during the 1980s and discuss whether rewilding offers an opportunity for radical innovation in the design and management of urban green spaces and civic responses to the climate and nature emergencies.

Rewilding has rapidly entered the mainstream of scientific, policy and popular discourse. It signifies a more hopeful environmental narrative and in Scotland is associated with new regenerative visions for the Scottish landscape and land economy. The notion of ‘urban rewilding’ is gaining traction but different groups assign different meaning to the term which can lead to confusion and concern and deaden the transformative potential of the underlying science and practice.

In this seminar, Dr Jepson will introduce a set of rewilding principles developed by European rewilding practitioners and an IUCN task force and contrast these with the approaches and achievements of the 1980’s urban conservation movement. This protected and restored nature in many cities as a civic asset and became normalised in planning as part of UK’s commitments under the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity.

Dr Jepson will then propose that rewilding signifies the emergence of ‘innovation spaces’ where progressive professional from different walks of life come together to ‘shake up the present to shape a better future’ for people and nature. With this thought in mind, Dr Jepson will outline the beginnings of a vision for urban rewilding with a focus on radical demonstration projects that inspire and inform regenerative agendas and (re) connect nature with urban culture, enterprise, life and identity.

Tuesday 6th December 2022, 13:00-14:00

ECA Boardroom, L.05 (North East Building, Edinburgh College of Art)

Speaker: Prof Ruth Jepson, Director of the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) and Co-Director of GroundsWell, a UKPRP funded consortium, which aims to drive community innovation applying systems science that maximise the contribution of Urban Green and Blue Space to the primary prevention of, and reduction of inequalities in, non-communicable diseases (NCD) in urban settings. 

Seminar Title: A framework for co-creating sustainable and effective community projects

Services and projects such as those to increase accessibility to green and blue spaces often do not fully consider the underlying causes of a problem, the mechanisms of change and how to maximise sustainability and effectiveness. They often rely on ‘intuition’, expert knowledge and research from other areas. Whilst this approach may result in success, much time and effort may also be spent on services that are not effective, or cannot maintain funding beyond the initial period.

Improving the effectiveness and sustainability of such services relies as much on their design and feasibility as on their evaluation. Yet, compared to the vast literature on how to evaluate interventions, there is little to guide researchers or practitioners on how best to develop such interventions in practical, logical, evidence based ways to maximise likely effectiveness.   

This seminar presents a pragmatic guide to six essential Steps for Quality Intervention Development (6SQuID). The focus is on public health interventions but the model should have wider applicability. Once a problem has been identified as needing intervention, the process of designing an intervention can be broken down into six crucial steps:  

• defining and understanding the problem and its causes;  
• identifying which causal or contextual factors are modifiable: which have the greatest scope for change and who would benefit most;  
• deciding on the mechanisms of change;  
• clarifying how these will be delivered;  
• testing and adapting the intervention; and  
• collecting sufficient evidence of effectiveness to proceed to a rigorous evaluation. If each of these steps is carefully addressed, better use will be made of scarce public resources by avoiding the costly evaluation, or implementation, of unpromising interventions. 

All these steps need to be undertaken with communities and engaging with partners and actors who can make decisions around issues such as funding. 

The six steps will be used to describe how we can better develop and evaluate interventions to improve our green and blue spaces.  

Please find the seminar recording and presentation slides below.

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Tuesday 8th November 2022

Speaker: Leyla Deniz Kiraz, ECA PhD Candidate, Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Leyla is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, researching on developing a model to predict the effect of urban parks on the wellbeing of users. Her PhD research examines the landscape qualities of urban parks, characteristics of urban park users, prediction of people’s behaviours and their interaction with landscape qualities in urban parks, and the effect of landscape qualities of urban parks on the moods of users. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Architecture at the Middle East Technical University and her Master’s degree in Digital Integrated Design at the University of Liverpool. Her research area includes landscape and wellbeing, human behaviour modelling, digital integrated design, and parametric design.

Seminar Title: Understanding Use of Parks and User Characteristics: Behaviour Observation and Mapping in Edinburgh’s Urban Parks

Behaviour observation and mapping is a systematic method used to understand the use of an area. It provides insight into user characteristics and activities performed in that area. Behaviour observation and mapping can be utilised to understand the use of parks and the characteristics of park users, which can provide information for new park projects and upgrades of existing parks. Moreover, it can be used to understand the change in the use of parks over time or as a result of the amendments in parks. In this talk, Leyla will explain the behaviour observation and mapping study she carried out as a part of her PhD research and present the changes observed in the use of parks and user characteristics in Edinburgh’s parks before and during COVID-19. Leyla will also explain the behaviour observation and mapping study in Edinburgh’s parks carried out with volunteers as a part of the Thriving Green Spaces project and share an overview of the study results.

Tuesday 5th April 2022

Speaker: Sara Tilley & Caroline Pearce,  ECA Research Fellow & Research Associate, Architecture and Landscape Architecture  

Sara is an OPENspace Research Fellow based at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. She joined the OPENspace team in January 2014, primarily to work on Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP) and Woods In and Around Towns.

Caroline Pearce is an OPENspace Research Fellow based at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. She joined the OPENspace team in April 2021 to work on Personal Projects within the Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC).

Seminar Title: Understanding how the outdoor environment enables older adults to flourish: A focus on ethical and recruitment challenges when undertaking research with older people during the COVID-19 pandemic

How is it possible to undertake meaningful and ethical research with older adults in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? Join us to reflect on and share experiences of adapting methods and research processes when researching older people’s experiences of outdoor environments.

In this seminar, we will present ongoing research that is exploring how the physical environment supports older adults to carry out the personal projects that make life enjoyable, and is part of the Advanced Care Research Centre programme (https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/advanced-care-research-centre). Personal projects is a concept developed by Brian Little, and describes the self-generated and purpose-oriented activities an individual is doing or planning to do.

Working across four sites in Scotland, this study aims to provide a detailed understanding of the types and qualities of environment that really make a difference to older people’s quality of life – their meaningful engagement with projects they wish to pursue in order to flourish – within a holistic context of what personal projects matter in their lives as a whole. Embarking on a research project during the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the ethical challenges involved in undertaking research with older people. We reflect on some of the challenges and opportunities we have experienced adapting to hybrid methods while ensuring that we accommodate the needs of the individuals and communities we are working with.

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Tuesday 22nd March 2022

Speaker: Charlotte Wendelboe-Nelson,  ECA Research Associate, Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Thursday 25th February 2021

Speaker: Dr Ryan Woolrych, Associate Professor in Urban Studies – Heriot Watt University

His research interests include: healthy and active ageing, ageing in place, and age-friendly cities and communities. Ryan has significant expertise of working on funded research in the UK and internationally, exploring the experiences of ageing in urban environments, applying qualitative, visual and participatory methodologies to understanding the relationship between people and place. Ryan is  currently P-I on two ESRC funded international research projects (working across the UK, India and Brazil) (‘Place-Making with Older People: Towards Age Friendly Communities’ and ‘Ageing Well in Urban Environments: Developing Age Friendly Cities and Communities’) collaborating with academic institutions, local government, community groups, residents and practitioners around the design of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. 

Seminar Title: ‘You Really Do Become Invisible’: Exploring Older Adults Rights to the City

A global ageing population presents opportunities and challenges to designing urban environments that support ageing in place. The World Health Organisation’s Global Age-Friendly Cities movement has identified the need to develop communities that optimise health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. Ensuring that age-friendly urban environments create the conditions for active ageing requires cities and communities to support older adults’ rights to access and move around the city (‘appropriation’) and for them to be actively involved in the transformation (‘making and remaking’) of the city. This raised important questions: what are older adults’ everyday experiences in exercising their rights to the city? what are the challenges and opportunities in supporting a rights to the city approach? how can the delivery of age-friendly cities support rights to the city for older people? This paper examines these questions through presenting the lived experiences of older adults across three cities and nine neighbourhoods in the UK collected through an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded three year project.

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Thursday 11th March 2021

Speaker: Rolf Roscher, Director – erz studio

Rolf Roscher, is an award winning landscape architect and urban designer with twenty five years of professional experience. Rolf co-founded the highly regarded landscape architecture practice erz in 2007.

erz have designed and delivered innovative, award-winning and successful projects across the UK, including civic spaces, parks and environments for health and wellbeing, education, play, housing and community.

Rolf’s recently completed projects include the new Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow (winner of the Excellence in Landscape Design category at the 2020 Landscape Institute Awards), public realm works on the waterfront at Dunoon and the first phase of the redevelopment of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital campus.

Seminar Title:  ANALEPTIC LANDSCAPE

Rolf Roscher, director of Glasgow based Landscape Architects erz, will discuss the practice’s health and care projects. Over the past 14 years erz have designed and overseen delivery of a wide range of innovative health and care projects. These include masterplans and strategies for existing hospital campuses and new facilities focused on mental health, physical health and end of life care. Projects discussed will include the new Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow (winner of the Excellence in Landscape Design category at the 2020 Landscape Institute Awards) and the first phase of the redevelopment of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital campus.

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Thursday 25th March 2021

Speaker: Dr Anne Templeton, Lecturer in Social Psychology – University of Edinburgh

Anne’s over-arching research interest is applying the social identity approach to intra and intergroup processes. Her research primarily focusses on crowd psychology and using the social identity approach to improve crowd safety in emergencies and at mass events. Anne do this through exploring a) the role of social identities on feelings of safety, empowerment, and well-being, b) processes underlying communication between crowd members and safety personnel, and c) advising on incorporating the role of social identities into pedestrian models of collective movement. Anne has advised on crowd safety for the Hajj, PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Rail Safety and Standards Boards, Local Authority Building Control, and the UK Home Office and UK Ministry of Defence.

Seminar Title: Physical crowds and psychological crowds: Incorporating group behaviour into crowd models

Models are used to simulate pedestrian behaviour for safety at mass events, yet these models often neglect the psychological factors influencing collective behaviour. Over two studies, we explored the role of group identification on pedestrian movement, both in unidirectional and bidirectional flow. Results suggest that group members will collectively self-organise their speed and distance walked in order to maintain close proximity and avoid outgroup members. Based on these studies, I make suggestions for including group behaviour in pedestrian models and broader implications for safety planning.

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Thursday 29th April 2021

Speaker: Dr Mathew White, Senior Scientist (Environmental Psychology) – Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, University of Vienna

Mat White is an Environmental Psychologist at the University of Vienna who is especially interested in the relationship between different urban and natural environments and mental health. He is in awe of Landscape Architects who actually design settings to improve people’s health and well-being and would love to work more with them to help produce evidence-based designs that reduce inequalities in mental health in particular.

Seminar Title: Blue landscapes, health and well-being

Abstract: Research into the potential health and well-being benefits from exposure to green spaces such as parks and woodlands has led to the development of several frameworks linking the different strands of evidence. The current talk builds on these to provide a model of how exposure to aquatic environments, or blue spaces such as rivers, lakes and the coast, in particular, may benefit health and well-being. Although green and blue spaces share many commonalities, there are also important differences. Novel aspects of our framework include the inclusion of outcomes that are only indirectly good for health through being good for the environment, the addition of nature connectedness as both a trait and state, and feedback loops where actions/interventions to increase exposure to blue landscapes are implemented. Limitations of the framework and areas for future work, including the need to integrate potential benefits with potential risks, will be discussed.

Click the link below to find out more

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935120310665

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Thursday 27th  May 2021
1:00 – 2:00pm

Speaker: Dr Victoria Lee, Lecturer in Architecture and Environment – ESALA

Victoria’s research focuses on understanding the interrelationships between the indoor environmental conditions and the occupants’ comfort and wellbeing, with a special interest in occupant behaviours. She currently teaches technology and environment in ESALA.

Seminar Title: At the Window: how we ‘use’ it and what bugs us

Our relationship with the window, as an architectural feature or building element, is manifold. During the pandemic lockdowns, windows were both the metaphorical and literal connection to the outside world for many. From a technical perspective, windows also provide one of the most fundamental ways of ventilating the indoor environment, now a key parameter to ensure safe return to our workplaces. I will discuss some preliminary findings from a questionnaire survey on windows in people’s homes conducted in Scotland at the end of the first lockdown.  

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Semester 2

Monday 2nd March 2020
12:30 – 2:00pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Francisca Lima, a landscape designer and a lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art, where she currently teaches history and theory of landscape architecture. In 2016, she obtained her PhD from ESALA – University of Edinburgh – which focused on the impacts of urban depopulation, with a full scholarship from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. Before her doctoral project, Francisca had been collaborating with several Portuguese landscape design offices, as well as with the Philosophy Centre and LEAF Research Centre, University of Lisbon. In 2005, Francisca completed her degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Lisbon, developing a final dissertation on ‘Landscape Aesthetics’.

Seminar Title: Geometry of Infinity

Since 1975, the mathematical theories of fractal geometry have been deeply influential in the fields of landscape perception, mathematics, and technology. However, the relationship between landscape design and fractal geometries has been seldomly explored. This presentation focuses on the four-fold garden design model, – the Charbagh, so typical of Islamic garden design – as a geometry that can convey a seminal idea of fractal infinity, potentially explored both metaphysically and mathematically.

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Semester 1

Monday 7th October 2019
1:00 – 2:30pm
Minto House – Geddes Meeting Room 3.61

Speaker: Dr Simon Bell, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Associate Director, OPENspace Research Centre.

Simon is interested in aspects of the wider landscape, such as forests, rural and wild landscapes as well as the peri-urban zone. This includes planning and design aspects, forest landscape aesthetics, urban forestry, outdoor recreation and the health benefits of exposure to nature in such areas.

Seminar Title:  Blue Health project update

Blue Health is a pan-European research initiative investigating the links between environment, climate and health. It is funded by the EU’s Horizon2020  (https://bluehealth2020.eu/). The project is now in its third year and Simon will discuss the projects recent progress and early findings.

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Tuesday 12th November 2019
1:00 – 2:00pm
ECA Fire Station – Seminar Room B

Speaker: Dr Sara Tilley is a Research Fellow at the OPENspace research centre at Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA). 

Her research focuses on transport and mobility in urban settings. In particular, Sara is interested in exploring the links between mobility in the urban environment and health and wellbeing.

Seminar Title: Making Connections: the experience of disabled and Deaf people making journeys

Many journeys rely on us changing from one mode of transport to another, navigating the spaces between services, where one ‘stops’ and another ‘starts’.  But even short transfers have potential barriers – crossing a busy street, poor lighting, difficulty finding a place to sit down and rest.

‘Making Connections’ is a project that brought disabled people together with transport operator staff and other professionals to experience and assess journey connections between rail and ferry services. It involved working with disabled people to describe and record the real challenges of making connections and work with transport providers to develop improvements to make travel easier for everyone. Sara will present an overview of the project process and key findings along the way.

Semester 2

Monday 21st January 2019
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Ziwen Sun,PhD student, ESALA, Edinburgh College of Art

Seminar Title: Everyday use of urban street spaces: the spatio-temporal variations between pedestrians and street vendors

Ziwen’s PhD project focuses on “walkability/walking, transient space and the smaller Chinese cities”. In the light of his interests of understanding how cities and place are experienced and re-used by the public, he teaches students to re-think the existing static spatial terms into a series of urban transition, power relation, itinerant everyday activity, and moveable apparatus etc.  He has received various awards in research and practice. Recently, his research workshop has been approved as one of the MOHURD-endorsed Programmes in China.

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Monday 11th February 2019
12.30 – 2pm
Institute of Geography (Old Infirmary) – Rm 2.01

Speaker: Anne Cleary, Research Fellow, School of Medicine, Griffith University (currently visiting Rutherford Fellow at Brunel University London)

Seminar Title: Nature and wellbeing – the case for connecting urban residents with local nature

There is now a well-established evidence base showing the positive associations between nature contact and a range of health and wellbeing benefits. With the majority of earth’s residents living in urban environments, opportunities to experience and connect with nature can be scarce.  This presentation will provide an overview of what we know about the links between urban nature, nature connection and health and wellbeing. International case studies will then be used to highlight practical approaches to applying the evidence base and optimising the wellbeing promoting potential of urban nature.

Anne is a research fellow with Griffith University’s School of Medicine in Brisbane, Australia and is currently completing a Rutherford Fellowship based at Brunel University London. Anne’s research interests are in urban nature and health and wellbeing and she has worked with the World Health Organisation’s European Centre for Environment and Health producing several documents on urban green space interventions.

Please click here to listen to Anne’s talk.

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Monday 25th February 2019
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Hazreena Hussein, Graduate, Edinburgh College of Art and Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur

Seminar Title: The development and promotion of Therapeutic Sensory Stimulation Garden in Malaysia

Hazreena’s research interests focus on Environment-Behaviour interactions and Multisensory environments. She will give a personal insight into the 12 years (and counting) she spent working on the design and use of sensory gardens. The success and failures of these gardens learned, whilst sharing its effort in providing such garden in Malaysia.

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Wednesday 6th March 2019
12 – 1pm
Room B1.11-1 Outreach Centre, 9C Holyrood Road

Speakers:Dr. Jonatan Almagor & Dr. Stefano Picascia

Seminar Title: Let’s put people in place: Using agent-based models to investigate the impact of neighbourhood settings on visits to green spaces and physical activity

This seminar is organised by the Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH), OPENspace and the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) and everyone is warmly invited to attend. For more information please go to: https://lets-put-people-in-place.eventbrite.co.uk

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Monday 18th March 2019
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Mark Cherrie, is a researcher in Health and Environment, Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH), School of Geosciences.

Seminar Title: “Quantifying exposure to the natural environment across the life course:  implications for health inequalities”

It is essential to take a life course approach to understand the determinants of health in later life. A life course approach aims to quantify physical or social exposures during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and later life. This talk will explore the methods that are used to collect information on everyday (e.g. smartphone GPS) to lifetime movement (e.g. life-grid), and how these can be used to quantify exposure to the natural environment. The talk will conclude with a discussion on how promoting greater interaction with the natural environment can be effective for reducing health inequalities.

Please click here for a copy of the presentation and click here to watch the dancehalls video.

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Monday 1st April 2019
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Agnès Patuano, Teaching Assistant – MSc Landscape & Wellbeing; Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Seminar Title: “Understanding landscape preference using fractal geometry”

This seminar is a discussion of the results obtained during the second part of Agnès’ PhD study, which generally explored the use of fractal characteristics of landscape photographs as predictors of landscape preference. This section focuses on collecting preference ratings through an online survey disseminated in France and the UK. It was found that different groups of participants reacted differently to the fractal dimensions, and that some of those groups were significantly influenced by those characteristics while others were not. Interestingly, the aspect of our preference judgement most correlated with the values of fractal dimensions was our “interest” preference, measuring participants’ desire to explore the depicted scenes. This challenges the underlying status quo on the aesthetic value of fractal patterns as well as shining a new light on the landscape characteristics most likely to elicit positive preference.

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Monday 29th April 2019
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Jung-Hwa Kim, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and is a Visiting Researcher at the Environmental Planning Institute of Seoul National University.

Seminar Title:  Reinventing the Theatrum Botanicum: The New Display of Nature in Contemporary Botanical Gardens

Her project aims to explore a phenomenon in contemporary landscape architecture, the reinvention of botanical gardens, by placing it in an extended timeframe to show botanical gardens as the theatre of plants, an emblem of the human relationship with nature. She will review recent master-plan projects of botanical gardens in the UK such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

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Monday 6th May 2019
12.30 – 2pm
Old Medical School, Teviot – 1.434 Teaching Room 7 – Doorway 3
*Please note change from usual venue*

Speaker: Dr Simon Bell, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Associate Director, OPENspace Research Centre.

Simon is interested in aspects of the wider landscape, such as forests, rural and wild landscapes as well as the peri-urban zone. This includes planning and design aspects, forest landscape aesthetics, urban forestry, outdoor recreation and the health benefits of exposure to nature in such areas.

Seminar Title:  Blue Health project update

Blue Health is a pan-European research initiative investigating the links between environment, climate and health. It is funded by the EU’s Horizon2020  (https://bluehealth2020.eu/). The project is now in its third year and Simon will discuss the projects recent progress and early findings.

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Semester 1

Monday 24th September 2018
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Rebecca Crowther, recently gained her PhD from Edinburgh College of Art in the remit of ‘nature,’ wellbeing, personal transformation and group dynamics. Her work is transdisciplinary, ethnographic and based in Scotland.

Seminar Title: Journeys to the Ideal Self: Personal Transformation through Group Encounters in Rural Scotland

Plus new research: Literal and metaphorical darkness in natural landscapes. Mental health in dark landscapes

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Monday 29th October 2018
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Natalie Reguis,PhD student, The Urban Institute, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society (EGIS), Heriot Watt University

Seminar Title: The impact of nature on work-related stress

Natalie’s research interests focus on healthy buildings and how the built environment impacts people’s health (physical, psychological and social).  Nature has been shown to help work-related stress. But how can nature be efficiently incorporated inside and will it have the same positive impact?

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Monday 19th November 2018
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Jennifer Noallis completing her PhD with the School of Geosciences. She has been working with OPENspace as part of a Forestry Commission Scotland project for Woods in and Around Towns.

Seminar Title: Forests, health and inequalities in Scotland: a longitudinal approach

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Monday 3rd December 2018
12.30 – 2pm
ECA Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Penny Travlou, Lecturer in Cultural Geography and Theory in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) and a Research Fellow in OPENspace.

Penny’s research is interdisciplinary, focusing on theories of space and place, the politics of public space, digital culture, distributed networks, ‘the Commons’ and ethnography.

Seminar Title: From Public Space to the Commons: Defining Intangible Cultural Landscapes

Semester 2

Monday 22nd January 2018
12.30 – 2pm
Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Agnès Patuano, Teaching Assistant – MSc Landscape & Wellbeing,
Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape, University of Edinburgh

Seminar title: Quantifying the Naturalness and Complexity of Landscape Photographs using their Fractal Dimensions.

> View and download Agnès’ presentation

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Monday 26th March 2018
12.30 – 2pm
Room 2.13, Institute of Geography, Drummond Street, EH8 9XP

Speaker: Dr Sarah Bell, Research Fellow, European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School

Seminar Title: Weathering the body: nature, health and wellbeing in the context of life with sight impairment.

We are delighted to jointly host this seminar with the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh.

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Monday 30th April 2018
12.30 – 2pm
Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Francisca Lima, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh

Seminar title: Outdoor Spaces for Shrinking Communities

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Monday 7th May 2018
12.30 – 2pm
Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Simon Bell, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Seminar title: Blue Health Project

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Monday 21st May 2018
12.30 – 2pm
Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Dr Amanda Nioi, Department of Human Health,
School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

Seminar title: Light, Design and Health: an introduction to the impacts of light on human health, methodologies in capturing data and developing design guidance.

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Semester 1

Monday 20th November 2017
12.30 – 2pm
Evolution House Boardroom (Room 5.21), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Guillem Vich, PhD Student, Geography Department,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Seminar title: Between proximity and remoteness: an exploration of the spatial extent of everyday life in a Metropolitan context.  Analysis of the effects of built environment on individual spatial behaviour using smartphone tracking data.

> View and download Guillem’s presentation

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Monday 4th December 2017
12.30 – 2pm
Main Boardroom (Room L05), Edinburgh College of Art

Speaker: Yusef Samari, PhD Student, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh

Seminar Title: Improving biodiversity in urban green spaces – opportunities and challenges.