Sean Kelly

Education 

• BLA Landscape Architecture, Guelph
• MSc. Rural Planning, Guelph
• FCSLA, OALA, ASLA

Bio Summary

Professor Sean Kelly is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and has served as the BLA Program Coordinator, and most recently (2017-2025), as the Director of the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. 

Originally from St. John’s Newfoundland, Sean grew up throughout Canada and has lived in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, and in the US, in both Texas and Mississippi. His affinity for landscape, its cultural diversity, and “flora and fauna” has been cultivated through a great many experiences whether it be through his upbringing, professional work, and the “development of others”, as an educator and mentor to the countless number of students since the instruction of his first studio course in 1995 and the many post-graduates seeking support in their own professional registration pursuits.

Sean formally joined the SEDRD faculty in 2006, as an Assistant Professor, yet he had been instructing several “design implementation” courses as a sessional instructor over the previous decade at Guelph’s, UBC’s, and Mississippi State’s landscape architectural programs, as well as Georgian College’s Tourism & Hospitality (Ski Resort Operations) program.

Sean came from, and continues developing, his strong connection to professional practice – he believes his effectiveness with students is well served by his exposure to practice.  He is involved with preparing planning, design, and construction documents for a wide variety of project types; much of this related to recreation/sport, resort, destination area, and small community amenity development. For over three decades, Sean’s project experience has taken him world-wide and includes a great many project sites in Austria, Germany, Norway, Morocco, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and extensively throughout Canada and the USA.

Within SEDRD, Sean instructs students in both design and design implementation studio courses and brings much of his private practice techniques and experiences to the studio. He believes a good foundation in preparing design programming, conceptual design, and detailed design drawings/specifications, and their requisite communication, are paramount to a graduating student’s marketability, success with professional competence exams, and career satisfaction. He designs his foundation and technical courses, and his senior capstone course, to ultimately prepare students for practice; including awareness of theoretical underpinnings, demonstrating an ability to work with both hand- and digitally- generated outputs, opportunities to communicate ideas through visual and verbal presentation, and ensures students have opportunities for specific exposure to a variety of project sites related to recreational, environmental preservation/rehabilitation, and urban environments.

Sean still manages to be involved as a partner and senior advisor to a small, professional planning/design firm of 10 dynamic design/planning individuals, providing services predominantly to smaller rural municipalities, communities, and destination areas. Sean is also an active member of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architecture, a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, American Society of Landscape Architects, Canadian Institute of Planners (formerly), and several ‘recreation/sport/snow/resort’ area associations.

Research Focus

Landscape Architecture / Planning

Sean continues his interdisciplinary research projects on amenity/destination and resort maturation and migration, issues related to sustainability, government sponsorship/risk management of capital projects in rural communities, and design as a catalyst for economic development in small communities.