Ian Gray, OALA, CSLA, Senior Landscape Architect & Urban Designer
Associate, Sustainable Systems Strategies & Design, MMM Group Limited
Ian Gray is a Landscape Architect with over 25 years of extensive experience. As a project manager and design lead he has been responsible for the design, coordination and administration of multi-disciplinary urban design and landscape projects including campus master plans, parks, streetscape and urban open space.
Ian is committed to environmentally effective design and has a proven ability to generate and link disparate design and environmental engineering ideas and technologies in innovative ways. He specializes in the design of sustainable systems for communities and sites.
He led the landscape design and stormwater harvesting strategy for the Bahen Centre at the University of Toronto, recipient of a Toronto Urban Design Award of Excellence and recently led the design team that implemented a complex landscape infrastructure of green walls, sustainable facilities, innovative grey to green stormwater systems, large earthworks, and a compelling program for forests, meadows, wetlands and urban agriculture for the 362 acres of open space at Downsview Park in Toronto.
In 2012 Ian lead the design for The Urban Orchard at Downsview Park which is an innovative model of an urban systems approach to design and community food production. It integrates selected urban systems of natural and social capital, including storm water and community agriculture.
In consultation with members of the community and experts in numerous design, scientific and artistic disciplines, the team realized an orchard with capacity for 550 trees integrated with a stormwater system in a public setting. The project inaugurates a 30 acre Cultivation Campus within Downsview Park that will engage with the local community and host a multitude of initiatives related to urban food production, distribution and education.
He is currently leading the development of Bioswale Design Guidelines for a joint pilot project with Canada Lands Company and the City of Toronto at the adjacent Stanley Greene neighbourhood and the neighbourhood public realm masterplan.
Ian has served as President of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, as an appointee to numerous boards including the Ontario Government, Ministry of Economic Development, and Design Sector Strategy Advisory Committee. He wrote the syllabus and taught the first Urban Ecology course at OCAD University and has lectured in the Landscape Architecture Programs at University of Toronto, University of Guelph and Ryerson University.
He is currently writing his thesis in Ecological Urban Design with a focus on resilience and complexity in urban patterns and forms as a candidate for a M. Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD University.
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