Adrian Sheppard

ADRIAN SHEPPARD was in continuous practice for about 30 years and is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at McGill University. He is active in civic affairs and has written and lectured on housing, on the conversion of old buildings and on Canadian architecture.

Prof. Sheppard is a native of Belgium and received his secondary education there and in Canada. After receiving his Bachelor of Architecture degree from McGill University, he traveled and worked in Europe for four years. He first trained with Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in London, then worked in Rome with Luigi Moretti and Pier Luigi Nervi where he was appointed project architect for the Place Victoria in Montreal and Watergate Development in Washington. Subsequently, he worked with Jan Verster in Amsterdam.

Following graduate studies at Yale University, where he obtained a Master of Architecture degree in 1965, he returned permanently to Montreal. A few years later he became a partner in Desnoyers Mercure Gagnon Sheppard, Architects where he was design partner on a broad scope of architectural projects and a number of large-scale urban planning studies in Canada and overseas. DMGS, in association with Norbert Schoenauer, became recognized authorities in housing and urban planning. Adrian Sheppard was Project Architect and co-designer for the new town of Fermont in the Canadian sub-Arctic, for the proposed new town of Woodroffe near Ottawa and later, in association with Moshe Safdie, for the new town of Keur Farah Palavi in Senegal and for Secteur Fournier in Hull. Adrian Sheppard was founding partner of Sheppard Dionne Laflamme, Architects, a firm specializing in housing and the conversion of old buildings to new uses.

He is a co-recipient of the Vincent Massey Medal in Architecture for the Jardins-Prince-Arthur project and co-recipient of the Heritage Canada National Prize for Conservation Architecture for the Cours Le Royer project in Old Montreal. In 2014 he was the recipient of the Heritage Montreal Foundation Prize Pierre angulaire for the promotion and protection of the architectural, historical, and cultural heritage of Greater Montreal. In 2013 he was awarded the Blanche Lemco van Ginkel Prize by the Order of Urbanists of Quebec for his contribution to urbanism in Quebec.

He has taught at the Boston Architectural Centre, Université de Montréal, Dalhousie University (Technical University of Nova Scotia), and since 1978 at McGill University. In 1992 he was appointed Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

Adrian Sheppard has represented the McGill School of Architecture on a number of committees for the Order of Architects of Quebec and was responsible for the Order's admission examination. He was a board member and treasurer of Héritage Montreal, member of the Commission consultative de Montréal sur les biens culturels, commissioner of the Bureau de consultation de Montréal, President of the Jacques-Viger Commission. He was a member of the Comité consultatif of Societé Immobilière du Québec (SIQ) for the restoration of the Court of Appeal in Montreal (designed by E. Cormier) and for the redesign of the Institut de tourisme et de l’hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ). He is permanent President of the Comité d’architecture et d’urbanisme (CAU) of Montreal.