We have a wide variety of instructors at Willowbank – it is the basis of the program. Not only does it allow us to choose from amongst the best for our instructors and tailor our program to the students; it allows us to make important connections and create a network within the heritage field. Over [...]
Read more →Welcome, reader. This is the third in a series of bi-weekly musings about the state of the heritage conservation field in Canada and internationally. A few days ago I presented the revised approach for the move and adaptive reuse of the Horticulture Building, a historic property within the Lansdowne Park redevelopment in Ottawa. The revised [...]
Read more →This week we had the opportunity to work with Craig Sims on an historic structures report for the Erland Lee Museum in Stoney Creek. Craig is an experienced heritage building consultant with an incredible amount of knowledge on windows in particular. It was an amazing experience to go through the museum and learn how to assess [...]
Read more →Welcome, reader. This is the second in a series of bi-weekly musings about the state of the heritage conservation field in Canada and internationally. I closed the first editorial by mentioning the relationship between ‘carpenter, architect, and planner’ as one-way of thinking about type 1, 2 and 3 personalities (feel free to substitute ‘gardener, landscape [...]
Read more →This week, we had a crash review in Glazing with John Wilcox of Vitreous Glassworks. You’ll remember we had a full week with him last year, learning the ins and outs of stained glass conservation, as well as how to make our own stained glass panels. This year, we had a similar experience, going over [...]
Read more →We’re back and at it, here at Willowbank, and right into the thick of things. After an enjoyable three week break, (Happy New Year – by the way), we launched right into design this week. I have to say that, as with most topics Julian covers, learning design concepts from Julian is eye opening. We [...]
Read more →Welcome, reader. This is the first of a series of bi-weekly musings about the state of the heritage conservation field in Canada and internationally. These comments are written from a Willowbank perspective, although they are personal and subjective and without any formal approval from our Willowbank Board or anyone else. The idea for a series [...]
Read more →This past weekend we rallied together as students to finish up our first (of what will hopefully become an annual tradition) Christmas float for the Niagara-On-The-Lake Santa Claus Parade. Over the past month or so, various groups of students have been getting together in the evening to build the float. The general idea was to [...]
Read more →The Bright Salon is done! Well, that may be an inappropriate description of the situation. But our rehabilitation of the architrave and pocket shutters is done. You’ll recall that we started working on the Bright Salon about a month ago, culminating in some amazing success with the plaster wall going back in. Unfortunately after figuring [...]
Read more →Last week I wrote about diversity as it applies to the economics of cities and regions. Though not ground breaking in any way, I mentioned that relying on a sole sector of the economy–say, for instance, the service sector–is not only unhealthy but irresponsible as well. I tried to related this approach to how we [...]
Read more →Diversification–it’s the new buzz word–well, maybe not that new. From Jane Jacobs to Richard Florida we now seem to have figured out that putting all of our eggs in one basket isn’t the way to go. Perhaps this is because we don’t seem to have a lot of eggs at the moment. Our scarcity of–well [...]
Read more →We went on two field trips this week to visit 4 very different buildings. The juxtaposition of the buildings and how they were developed gave me pause to think about how we perceive the use of heritage buildings and what that means for their rehabilitation. I will start with the buildings that we saw last, [...]
Read more →