Public Lecture: World Heritage - Urban Areas and Historic Cities (The University of Queensland)

This lecture presents a brief history of attitudes to conservation in the 20th Century - the key concepts underpinning the Venice Charter (1964) UNESCO recommendations on historic areas (1976) and the Lahore recommendations on historic cities (1980).

Professor Lewcock chronicles these changes in his own experiences in Cairo (1972-1984) and Uzbekistan (1970-1996) and he discusses in detail strategies employed in two World Heritage cities in modern Yemen - San'a and Shibam- from 1978 to the present.

Ronald Lewcock is a distinguished alumnus of the Department of Architecture at The University of Queensland. He was Aga Khan Professor of Architecture at MIT, 1984-91, Chairman of the Aga Khan Program at Harvard and MIT and a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 1970-85.

In 1991 he become Professor of the Doctoral Program in Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate from University of Natal in 1999.

Professor Lewcock has been consultant in conservation to UNESCO since 1978, and Technical Coordinator of Two UNESCO International Campaigns from 1982 to 1990 in San'a' and Shibam, as well as of the UN Campaign for Cultural Tourism and the Rerival of Heritage in Uzbekistan, 1991-1997. He is the author and joint author of eight books, over a hundred articles, and contributor to the major architecture, art and cultural encyclopaedias published since 1970.