Keynote Speaker Announced!

We are pleased to announce that the 2012 Municipal Heritage Forum keynote speaker will be Julian Smith, Executive Director of the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts in Queenston, Ontario. Julian has many years of experience as an architect and scholar focused on heritage conservation. He recently advised the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on the development of recommendations for Historic Urban Landscapes. Julian’s wide-ranging experience makes him the pre-eminent person to speak about our theme, “Place Matters!”

To learn more about Julian and some of the innovative and significant projects that he may speak about at our Forum, check out the brief biography that is posted on the Willowbank website: 

About Julian Smith:

Julian is an architect, conservator, scholar and educator. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the field of heritage conservation in general, and to cultural landscape theory and practice in particular. After a childhood in Montreal, Quebec; Delhi, India; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, he did undergraduate work at Oberlin, graduate studies with Kevin Lynch and others at MIT, and a certificate in preservation planning at Cornell. He worked in the contemporary design field with Peter Eisenman at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, and later returned to India to do research on cognitive mapping of historic town centres in South India. He moved to Canada and eventually became Chief Restoration Architect for the National Historic Sites program, a position he held for six years. He then established his own architectural and planning practice, and also founded and directed the graduate program in Heritage Conservation at Carleton University. He became Executive Director of Willowbank in 2008. Julian has been responsible for design and development work involving significant cultural sites in Canada, the U.S., France, Italy, India, Sri Lanka, and Japan. Among his projects are the restoration of the Vimy Monument in France, the Aberdeen Pavilion in Ottawa, and the Lister Block in Hamilton, and master plans for the Parliament Buildings in Toronto, the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, and a new campus for a historic college in south India. He has also developed policy documents for a variety of federal and provincial agencies in Canada, and has been Canadian delegate to UNESCO for the drafting of the new international recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes. His use of a cultural landscape framework allows him to move across the boundaries between architecture, landscape and urban design. Julian is architectural advisor to the Trustees of Queen’s University, a past member of the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and a frequent contributor to international forums. He is a recipient of Heritage Canada’s Gabrielle Léger Award and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Eric Arthur Award, both recognizing lifetime achievement in the heritage conservation field.

Interested in hearing Julian speak? If you are a municipal heritage stakeholder (i.e. municipal staff member, heritage advisory board member, councillor) look into attending our Municipal Heritage Forum on November 8-9, 2012 in Calgary. Detailed information about the Forum will follow shortly.

Written by: Brenda Manweiler, Municipal Heritage Services Officer