The process of creating a strategic plan for SALA began in 2019. Within a month of our internal consultation wrapping up in February 2020, SALA, and much of the rest of the world, had closed to mitigate COVID-19. UBC operations and academic programs shifted on-line for most of two years. When campus operations resumed in late 2022, we found ourselves in a very different place — one in which our strategic planning context had shifted significantly.
The design assumptions of daily life and design practice were shifting dramatically. So, we re-examined our draft plan. What do we need to know, to teach, to learn, to be an effective school of design? The familiar hierarchy — vision, mission, goals, strategies, objectives, actions would be presumptuous in the face of such uncertainty and instability.
What are the underlying strategic directions — the values, ambitions and priorities — that establish the enduring ‘whys’ that bind us to one another and to our place? Among them are commitments to who we are and what we believe — a community of purposeful and collaborative designers of ‘this place’; and, to the aspirations and priorities that we care about —impactful design, design fluency and engagement with people and communities.
A collaborative design community
We are a community of design thinkers, researchers, educators and professionals, who share a commitment to design as a means to address urgent human needs and interconnected global emergencies. Through thoughtful, creative inquiry and strategic design interventions, we work together toward better futures, a healthier planet, and more inclusive places and qualities of life.
A distinctive approach to design education
We offer a distinctive approach to design education that integrates artful, creative syntheses of built and natural approaches to design and construction. We teach design across scales and disciplines from hand-held objects to buildings, sites, public spaces, urban design and regional landscapes.
We are of this place
Our programs navigate the perspective, diversity and vitality of a global city and the ecologies, materials, technologies and cultures of local places and peoples. We are grounded in the cultures, climates and contexts of Vancouver, an international port city of the Canadian West Coast — a rich natural environment at an interface of the diverse communities and values of the Pacific Rim, urban North America and rural British Columbia.
Design for impact
We will refresh and adapt the ways and means through which our approaches to design, design education and design scholarship address shifting needs and urgencies:
Design for equity and justice
Diverse people and communities need design and design education. Our people, places, processes and practices respect that diversity, and will model the principles and practices of a just, equitable, inclusive and respectful culture for those with whom we work and collaborate.
Design for climate change
Climate change is the design challenge of our age. SALA develops design thinkers who can listen, research, and advocate for design solutions that mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. We collaborate with others outside our core professional communities and disciplines to meet this challenge.
Advocate for progress
The effects of design and design education extend well beyond our programs and geography. Our research, scholarship, creative work, and academic programs afford us opportunities to discover emerging issues and potential solutions. We share what we see and what we learn as spokespersons, convenors, advocates and agents for positive, progressive change.
Design fluency
SALA educates and inspires the next generation of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design practitioners to be progressive, creative agents and enablers of change, effective collaborators, and lifelong learners through:
Breadth + dexterity
Impactful design calls upon a broad and dynamic body of knowledge and dexterity of method in a constant state of refinement throughout a career. SALA’s academic programs and partnerships seek to engage the breadth of that knowledge and inspire the curiosity, motivation and tools for lifelong learning and adaptation.
Collaborative teaching and learning
SALA faculty, students and staff learn from and with one another and our partners. We inform, stimulate and challenge through respectful provocation, constructive and thoughtful feedback. Our classrooms, design studios and workplaces seek to facilitate humane, inclusive and collaborative places and a culture of belonging.
Making design tangible
Impactful design depends on direct experience with materials, processes and practices. We seek ways of connecting broadly based design thinking with that experience. We seek ways to remain technologically current, and in step with sustainable practices, with a critical eye on technology’s impact on people and the environment.
Engage people and communities
Productive interactions with people and places are our most influential teachers and beneficiaries of our expertise. The contexts within which we live, learn and work — UBC campus, our academic and professional communities, our external partner communities and international partnerships — are laboratories for this work:
Within SALA and UBC
A diverse pool of knowledge, experience and creative opportunity resides close at hand within SALA, the Faculty of Applied Science and the larger UBC community. Within this community we have sought, and continue to seek, new research and academic collaborators, and design partners.
Within and across our disciplines
Collaborations with professional partners and practitioners are essential to developing the next generation of architects, landscape architects and urban designers. Through them students and faculty gain opportunity to learn from those experienced in our fields and through which we share instructive and emerging projects, practices and design considerations outside of our day to day experience.
Across our external communities
The voices and perspectives of those with distinctive lived experiences are crucial contributors to design research and education at SALA. Students, staff and faculty frequently partner with collaborators, advisors, sponsors, and user groups in the community at large. SALA partners with clients, communities, practitioners, makers, artists, builders and manufacturers that inform the refinement of design issues, technologies, and production processes.