Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/687429
8 | J UNE 2016 EDA Collaborative Inc. S peaking with Patrick Li and Ted Muller, principals at international landscape architecture and urban design firm EDA Collaborative Inc., it's impossible not to get swept away with the intense passion they hold for the industry. To Li and Muller, beautifying the esthetics of the external environment to bring people and land together is just one small (albeit integral) element of landscape architecture and design. Nor is it solely about the environmental, ecological and social-behavioural benefits that these designs can bring. Instead, for Li and Muller, they believe their role is to humanize the outdoor landscape. This progressive thinking lies at the core of EDA's sensibilities. Long before sus- tainability and ecosystem management were buzz words, EDA was practicing these ideas daily. Afterall, this was 30 years ago, long before Al Gore's release of An Inconvenient Truth and around the time Environment and Climate Change Canada was taking its first baby steps. "When we used to talk about stormwater management people thought we were crazy," laughs Li, one of the founding members of EDA Collaborative Inc. It was a chance meeting during an assignment based out of the U.K., that the founding members, Patrick Li, Bruce Cudmore and Ron Tatasciore met. "I was work- ing for a multidisciplinary company in Canada at the time called Project Planning Associates, and in 1976 we landed a big project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for the King Abdullazis University. At the age of 31 I was assigned as the director of the urban and landscape architectural group to run the project out of London, England," explains Li. Financial complications on the part of the client eventually resulted in the project folding, so in 1978 Li returned to Toronto. Tired of the bureaucracies of working for the government or a large firm, and recognizing a need for a company that could build a team of cutting-edge experts specifically for the job in hand, Li decided to set up on his own. "I wanted to keep the firm small and specialized, and make connections with experts in their field. I didn't want to tell clients that we can do everything; instead I wanted to build teams specific to that job – to have access to the best talent required for that particular project. That's been the fundamental philosophy of the company and has led us to being very diversified," says Li. When Cudmore and Tatasciore returned to Canada they joined Li and set up an office in the basement of Li's house. EDA Collaborative Inc. was born. In the early 1980s, during one of Alberta's oil booms, Tatasciore travelled to Edmonton to set up an office that would cater to clients in Western Canada. It was here that Ted Muller, now a principal at EDA, came onboard. "I too had been working for a large multi-disciplinary firm, I guess you see a pattern here, and was looking for an opportunity in a smaller practice. I started working for EDA and have never looked back," says Muller. Fast forward 22 years and EDA's success and drive to tackle new challenges resulted in the partners opening up an office in Beijing, China. "We went through a journey that started in Toronto, then Edmonton and finally Beijing. We knew we wanted to grow, and being from Hong Kong I was fully aware of the Chinese market. Thankfully my partners supported my venture and we created another big mile- stone for EDA," says Li. While EDA today stands as an international firm it has a tightly knit core team of staff due to the great number of collaborations it has invested in across the world. Visit any of EDA's offices and you get a distinct sense of family. "It's a very casual, relaxed, yet focussed environment. Some of our staff has been with the company for more than 20 years, but by the same token we have new staff who add to the dynam- ics of the company," says Muller. The partners remain very much hands on and each staff member is aware of what their colleagues are working on. It's very much a collaborative affair. "Because of the size of the company we don't need to formalize meetings. Things are far more impromptu. People know what's going on. We can remain nimble as we don't have as much red tape to deal with and be extremely responsive," adds Li. "I didn't want to have anything else. When I worked for a larger firm I spent a lot of time writing memos. Now, if someone has a problem, they can come directly to me or Ted. And yet we benefit from having access to a wide talent pool due to our collaborations." This organic nature exudes not just throughout the company but in the projects that EDA has worked on. Humanizing The Urban Environment EDA Collaborative takes progressive thinking up a notch by NATALIE BRUCKNER-MENCHELLI