Lesia Mokrycke, Tropos, Hamilton, Monument Trees

FUNCTION

FORM

SPIRIT

Hamilton is known as an industrial center and an arts city. It is also an Eco-city.

The Urban Forest Lab was established as part of Tropos+ in 2021 as a creative space for generating innovative approaches to conservation in urban areas. As an interdisciplinary initiative, the work builds on issues of landscape practice to bridge art and science.

The Urban Forest Lab fosters new approaches to creative engagement, ecology, and social practice that enhance the urban forest.

We work from this understanding to look at developing underutilized landscapes into naturalized urban spaces, and expand how these environments can support people and wider ecosystems.

Tropos+ is the studio's award winning research space. Our work explores human connection to the land through the arts. Landscape architects have long investigated links between people, health, and nature. As part of Tropos+ we explore different approaches to science-based questions about art, design and issues of landscape.

The studio's research incorporates performance-based methodology, material studies, and analytical site research that was developed by Lesia Mokrycke in the early stages of her art practice. These methods use a variety of 'experiments' designed to test ideas and allow certain programs to play out in physical space.

The studio's current research positions historic trees, coined MONUMENT TREES, as key ecological anchors for understanding regional natural systems. As cultural symbols, our work values old trees as repositories of memory and a foundation for sense of place.