Simon Bell

Professor Simon Bell PhD is a forester-turned-landscape architect. He worked for 20 years for the UK Forestry Commission as a landscape architect from 1979 to 1999 and in 2000 joined ECA and co-founded the OPENspace Research Centre which is now within ESALA. He has been professor of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, in Tartu, Estonia since 2009. He is interested in aspects of the wider landscape, such as forests, rural and wild landscapes, urban gardening, blue spaces as well as the peri-urban zone. This includes planning and design aspects, forest landscape aesthetics, urban forestry, outdoor recreation and the health benefits of exposure to green and blue environments. Recent projects, a large EU Horizon2020 project on the relationship of water environments (blue spaces) on health and wellbeing (BlueHealth). Simon co-founded the MSc programme on Landscape and Wellbeing in ESALA.

Between 2012 and 2018 he served as President of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). He has published many books and numerous papers, is visiting professor at several universities and co-director of the Joint Laboratory of Healthy Space, between the University of Edinburgh and Beijing Institute of Technology, China.