The Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects (TTIA) host­ed a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion on "Pre­serv­ing our Ar­chi­tec­tur­al Her­itage" on Wednes­day 1st De­cem­ber 2010 at the Main Hall in Queen's Roy­al Col­lege from 6.00pm to 8.00pm. The keynote pre­sen­ta­tions were de­liv­ered by two of Trinidad and To­ba­go's promi­nent ar­chi­tects, Rudy­lynn De Four Roberts and Bernard Mack­ay who are re­spon­si­ble for the his­toric restora­tions of Stollmey­er's Cas­tle and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege re­spec­tive­ly. Ms. Robert's pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cused on "Built Her­itage Preser­va­tion is our Busi­ness"; while Mr. Mack­ay shared his ex­pe­ri­ence on "QRC Re­stored - The Process".

The Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tion was part of the TTIA's on­go­ing mis­sion to 'pro­mote ex­cel­lence in Ar­chi­tec­ture as an es­sen­tial con­trib­u­tor to the built en­vi­ron­ment for present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions'. Mark Ray­mond, Pres­i­dent of the TTIA ob­serves that "For a num­ber of years a group of con­ser­va­tion­ists, sup­port­ed by the TTIA, have been hard at work lob­by­ing key mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure that the preser­va­tion of our ar­chi­tec­tur­al built her­itage such as the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en and the Pres­i­dent's House are kept at the fore­front of GOTT's agen­da."

The TTIA re­mains com­mit­ted to the preser­va­tion and restora­tion of these his­toric build­ings, which have been vic­tims to an alarm­ing rate of di­lap­i­da­tion due to on­go­ing wa­ter and ter­mite dam­age. The De­cem­ber 1st event was de­signed to raise pub­lic aware­ness and gov­ern­ment ac­tion to pre­vent fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of our ar­chi­tec­tur­al lega­cy. Ac­cord­ing to Mr. Ray­mond, "These beau­ti­ful build­ings are a tes­ti­mo­ny to our cul­ture and his­to­ry as a peo­ple and we must act de­ci­sive­ly and in a time­ly man­ner to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age and pre­serve them for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to come." Spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests and mem­bers of the me­dia were giv­en a spe­cial­ly guid­ed tour of the re­stored QRC build­ing.