ACO Toronto 2026 Symposium: Heritage and Public Space

Tickets are now available for the ACO’s 2026 symposium! This years theme is Heritage and Public Spaces. They will have a keynote talk by Alessandro Tersigni followed by a panel with expertise from Micheal McClelland (Friends of Allan Gardens), Brendan Stewart (PlazaPOPS), Pamela Hart (Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto), and Jason Thorne (City of Toronto).

About the Symposium:

Every year, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Toronto Branch hosts a symposium exploring current heritage ideas. Past themes have included Intangible Heritage, Housing and Heritage, Main Streets, Modernist Schools, and Demolition. This year’s symposium will explore ideas of heritage and their relationship to public space.

Heritage exists in our relationships with meaningful places and experiences. Without the opportunity to flaneur past Victorian storefronts, look up into a train station’s Great Hall, or sit on a bench in a century-old park, the value of these places diminished. Not only must these spaces be accessible for us to appreciate them, but the fact of being public spaces itself takes on its own kind of heritage value.

Join ACO Toronto and a multidisciplinary panel of speakers in the Allan Gardens Palm House – one of Toronto’s most iconic and storied spaces and heritage buildings – to explore the many ways public spaces and places with heritage value interact and intersect in Toronto and beyond.

Read more about the symposium and the speakers on their website and their Eventbrite page.