About us.

Future Elements Studio (festudio) is a research and teaching group in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

We inventory, monitor, and research the intricacies of human settlements, encompassing elements from individual trees, buildings, to cities and regional landscapes. Our work uses geospatial analytics, cartography, and an array of sensing technologies such as optical remote sensing and laser scanning.

News.

2024 November: After a little break from our last guest lecture, we are back with an existing lecture from Dr. Riccardo Tortini on advanced remote sensing and land monitoring. See you on Nov 22.

2024 October: As part of our ongoing research on urban digital twin (UDT), this Winnipeg city-wide 2.5D urban tree dataset is now available to download.

2024 September: We are excited to share the first version of a step-by-step guide on digital arial photogrammetry thanks to our amazingly talented URA student researchers. Details here.

2024 August: To celebrate and share what our amazing summer research students have achieved, Dr. Mark Meager and our research lab are organizing a joint 3MT event. Details here.

2024 August: Teegan and Kimia (welcome!) will be working with us this coming Fall, developing a categories of abstract landscape patterns. Thank you SoTL for supporting this project.

2024 August: We thank Dr. Srilalitha (Sri) Gopalakrishnan from the Future Cities Lab Global for giving us an overview of biophlic design and the behind-the-scenes of iconic landscape architecture projects in Singapore.

2024 July: Excited to have Haozhuo Yang from the Graduate School of Design (Harvard University) presenting his research on urban data and AI later this month. RSVP here!

2024 June: We are delighted to be part of the summer research presentations happening at the FoA. Visit our new Gallery page to see some of the actions from our students!

2024 May: A new teaching-oriented project has been funded by the Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) with a focus on typifying landscape spatial patterns and vocabulary. This is also in collaboration of our colleague Frits Van Loon (Assistant Professor).

2024 Apr: We are excited to welcome two Undergraduate Research Awardees, thanks to the URA program. Brandan and Miguel will be working full time with us from May until end of August!

2024 Mar: Our proposal to acquire a multi-spectral drone has been awarded by the SIEF grant at UM Faculty of Architecture. We look forward to collecting some delicious spectral data and point-clouds over our landscape in the coming years with our friends and colleagues at the FabLab. Stay tuned!

2024 Feb: Yuhao becomes one of the newest working group members of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6.

2024 Jan: We thank the University of Manitoba’s URGP program for providing a seed grant for our research on urban digital twins (UDT).

2024 Feb: We are growing! Kyra, Reece, and Zach from the Environmental Design program joined us to work on a funded project. Welcome!

2024 Jan: We thank the University of Manitoba’s URGP program for providing a seed grant for our research on urban digital twins (UDT).

2024 Jan: festudio welcomes Benjamin, Matthew, and Gel from the Department of Landscape Architecture. First three of many!

2024 Jan: future elements studio (festudio.ca) begins!

Land acknowledgement.

We are located on original lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Ojibwe-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Red River Métis.

We are grateful for being able to live, work, and play on these lands.

Video: colourized point clouds (source) of University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry Campus.