Julian Smith is principal of Julian Smith & Associates Architects. He Is also Executive Director of Willowbank, an independent non-profit institution in the heritage conservation field. Julian’s work on culturally-significant sites has involved him with projects in Canada, the U.S., France, Italy, India and Sri Lanka. These projects have included both pure conservation, as in the restoration of the Vimy Memorial in France, as well as the integration of contemporary design into historic settings, as in the Lister Block in Hamilton and a new campus for a historic college in south India. He was one of the co-authors of UNESCO’s 2011 Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes, which addresses the importance of creative contemporary design in historic settings. The Centre for Cultural Landscape at Willowbank promotes this concept of dynamic rather than static approaches to culturally-significant places. He was recently named an Honorary Member of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects.
Susan Ross, OAQ, MRAIC, LEED AP, is a senior conservation architect with the Heritage Conservation Directorate at Public Works and Government Services Canada, the federal government’s interdisciplinary centre of professional expertise on heritage conservation. Susan also teaches in the Conservation and Sustainability programme at Carleton University’s School of Architecture. Prior to completing a graduate degree in conservation from University of Montréal, she worked both in private practice and for heritage organizations in Montreal and Berlin. Her project work addressed alterations and additions to hospitals, schools, factories, a power station, lighthouses, office buildings and historic houses. She is active with Association for Preservation Technology, in particular in helping advance sustainable heritage conservation practices. Her research on topics such as modern heritage and sustainable conservation has been published in Canadian and international journals. Her recent writing on Canada’s 20th century built wood heritage is to be published in the coming year.
Michael McMordie is a graduate of the Universities of Toronto (BArch 1962) and Edinburgh (PhD 1972). From 1965 until 1974 a member of the Edinburgh faculty, he joined the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary in 1974. His doctoral research comprised an historical and critical study of important sources of modern architectural theory. He taught architectural history and theory at both Edinburgh and Calgary, acted as a studio instructor and supervised the work of graduate students in a number of areas.
Administrative roles at Calgary included Director of the architecture program 1979-82, Dean of the Faculty of General Studies (now part of the Faculty of Arts) 1990-98 and from 1999 to 2005 Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (until 2004 the Resources and the Environment Program) in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. He was centrally involved in the founding and development of the Canadian Architectural Archives at the University of Calgary. He is a member of the executive of the university's Consortium for Peace Studies.
An important interest has been architectural and urban conservation. Local and national activities beyond the university have included the 1974-5 ad hoc committee whose recommendations led to the City of Calgary’s heritage program, the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (president 1977-80), and the Calgary Civic Trust (president 1999-2003). He has consulted for the cities of Calgary and Edmonton and Parks Canada on historic buildings. His contributions to preservation of the Canadian architectural heritage were recognized by the award of the Heritage Canada Foundation Gabrielle Léger medal in 2002 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee medal in 2003.