Richard leBrasseur

Dr. Rick leBrasseur is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Dalhousie University within the Department of Plant, Food and Environmental Sciences.

A licensed landscape architect, environmental psychologist, researcher, and peri-urbanist, he is the Director of the interdisciplinary Green Infrastructure Performance Lab applying research knowledge towards multifunctional infrastructures. His research encourages designers to to think about complex landscape-individual processes in relational terms, whereby integrative urbanisms can apply diverse frameworks to understand built and natural morphologies of people and place. Rick has received research grants from the Canadian Tri-Council and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Rick’s tenure included his endowed appointment as the Sumner Margetts Professor of Landscape Architecture at Utah State University while leading the Green Space Institute. He was the Developer and Director of UC Berkeley’s Sustainable Environmental Design & Stewardship Extension Program focusing on urban ecology and sustainable technologie). He served as Executive Director of The Center for Green Infrastructure Design non-profit environmental planning within the University of Utah’s City & Metropolitan Planning Department providing research, outreach, and land-use planning assistance to communities and administrative agencies in one of the United State’s most rapidly expanding regions.

Prior to his academic appointment, Rick worked at Hargreaves Associates, Charles Anderson Atelier, SWA Group, CRJA, EDAW, RHAA and contributed to multi-scale projects including the award-winning Olympic Sculpture Park. His collaborative designs and research has been, published, reviewed, and featured in Landscape Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture, The Royal Institute of British Architects, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Urban Land, among others. Past exhibits include The San Francisco Design Museum and The Walker Art Center. He has juried professional and student work at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Washington, UC Berkeley, Harvard University and Bartlett School of Architecture.

Rick has delivered keynote speeches and conference presentations at the International Association for Landscape Ecology, the International Low Impact Development Conference, the Environmental & Design Research Association, and the International Society of Participatory Mapping as well as seminars on green infrastructure to the US Forest Service, the Salt Lake County Watershed Symposium, The Conservation Fund and the US Green Building Council (LEED - Neighborhood Development).

His upcoming book focuses on peri-urban green infrastructure and the impacts of human development upon human-based ecosystem services in order to create physically, psychologically and socially meaningful descriptions of the environments in which we live and interact.