Edward Fife (Ed) is a Landscape Architect and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, who has educated hundreds of students in his 46+ years of teaching in the United States, Canada, China and other countries. He has taught in the areas of regional and urban landscape design, urban open space planning, conceptual thinking, urban ecology, plant design and history. He particularly valued teaching outside of the classroom, working in various urban, natural and foreign environments believing that immediate experience challenged the mind to generate more observed ways of thinking and the development creative designs.
Educated at the Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard he initially came to Canada to work in the office of Sasaki, Strong and Associates on projects such as Expo 67. This was followed by teaching at Ohio State University and then the University of Toronto where he was a professor and periodically chairman. Throughout his career he has been active in the OALA, CSLA, CELA becoming a Fellow of the CSLA in 1988.
Research interests included studies of urban open space and streetscapes exploring issues of ecology, time development, protection and vegetative selection for reasons of stability, visual quality and health. Projects include the ‘Heritage Forest Re-vegetation Study’ for the replanting of vegetative communities for multiple disparate sites in the Toronto area, scenarios for the projection of Toronto’s horticulture parks into the future and plant selection programs.
Ed has been active on numerous committees and working groups for both the CSLA and the OALA and has received numerous awards and citations for his involvement and his teaching.
