Honorary Members recognize persons who have performed notable service in advancing the cause of landscape architecture. Nominations are made by individual members through their component association six months prior to the Annual Congress. These nominations are reviewed and selections made by the CSLA Board of Directors.

Liane McKenna bestowing honourary CSLA membership to Julian Smith at the CSLA Gala on September 15th, 2012, in Halifax. (Photo: Jean Landry)

About Mr. Julian Smith

Mr. Smith is a highly regarded architect with a focus on heritage, yet has always considered landscape as an equal if not greater piece of the solution. Throughout his career in both the public and private sectors, Julian has always maintained the importance of landscape and landscape architecture and holds our profession and its members in the highest regard.

Mr. Smith 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 at Parks Canada, 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. Mr. Smith 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 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. He 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. Mr. Smith is currently the executive director of the Willowbank School for the Restoration Arts and the director of the Centre for Cultural Landscape, co-located in Queenston, Ontario.

CSLA Honourary Members

The Honourable T. B. McQuesten (1947)

The Right Honourable William Lyon Mackenzie King (1949)

Mr. Jacques Greber (1949)

Mr. George Chailles (1960)

Mr. Arthur E. K. Bunnell (1961)

Mr. Thomas W. Thompson (1966)

Mr. Edouard Fiset (1967)

Mr. George Arnot (1967)

Mr. Charles F. Campeau (1967)

Dr. R. J. Hilton (1967)

Dr. N.R. Richards (1967)

The Honourable Jack Davis (1972)

Mr. Patrick Joseph Moran (1975)

Prof. G. Angus Hills (1978)

Mr. Roberto Marx (1980)

The Honourable Justice Thomas R. Berger, Q.C. (1981)

Mayor Jean Drapeau (1984)

Mr. Dieter Martin (1985)

The Honourable Tom MacMillan (1989)

Mrs. Pleasance Crawford (1993)

Prof. Roger B. Martin (1993)

Dr. Jennifer Shay (1994)

Mayor Pierre Bourque (1995)

Mr. Malak Karsh (2000)

Mrs. Jean E. Pigott (2000)

Alexandre Reford (2001)

The Honourable Peter Lougheed, P.C., C.C., Q.C. (2001)

HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales (2001)

Mr. Larry Beaseley (2006)

Mr. Julian Smith (2012)