Keynote Biographies - Clifford Wiens

Clifford Wiens is the most acclaimed architect ever to call Saskatchewan home, with three of his buildings receiving Canada's highest award for design over the 40-year course of his Regina-based practice, founded in 1957. Wiens was born on his Glen Kerr-area family farm west of Regina in 1926. After short periods studying art and agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, Wiens was accepted into Rhode Island School of Design on full scholarship in 1949, intending a career in industrial design, but later electing to major in architecture. Wiens is unusual for his generation of Canadian Architects for the extremely wide range of clients and building types he engaged during his practice, much of it design from the innovative steel office building of his own devising on Albert Street. Wiens' designs such as the original Regina office building for IPSCO, the Nugent Studio (St. Mark's Shop) in Lumsden, a Trans-Canada Highway campground near Maple Creek, and the CBC Saskatchewan studios in Regina generated a national reputation amongst architects for their conceptual rigour, innovative detailing and expressive link to prairie landscapes. In the 1990s Wiens consulted and taught architecture in Arizona, before settling in Vancouver, where he continues to design houses.