This weekend, the Michigan Historic Preservation Network annual conference is coming to Ann Arbor. To honor their 30th year, MHPN has chosen “Celebrating Sustainable Communities” as this year’s theme.

You may have heard the phrase, “the greenest building is the one that has already been built.” In many cases, this is true. Throughout their respective histories, the historic preservation movement and the environmental movement have been linked. Though they have not always agreed, in general their mission is very similar.

In generic terms, one preserves the natural world while the other preserves the built - that is how it has been seen for the most part at least, until recently. Now more than ever, the interrelated fields are joining together in new partnerships in an effort to usher in this new era of sustainability with intelligence, creativity and passion.

Thumbing through the brochure for this year’s events, it is clear to see that there is something available for everybody.

The keynote address is free and open to the public. It will be held at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church at 1:15 p.m. Friday. Carl Elefante, FAIA, LEED AP, principal architect with Quinn Evans Architect, will deliver the address, which is titled “Maturing the ‘Greenest Building’ Paradigm."

If your interest is technical workshops, you’re in luck. There are sessions offered on everything from basement walls cracking and leaking to a workshop titled “Looking for a Sustainable Solution: Window Restoration or Replication?” If cultural heritage preservation is your particular cup of tea, you can sit in on “Preserve America: Making Cultural Heritage Tourism Happen." And if you are in the mood for some really great history you can sink your teeth into “Train Depots in Michigan: Lighthouses along the Rivers of Steel."

The conversation involving sustainability will be interwoven throughout the conference, but there are several lectures on specific points within that theme. Some involve projects that are being done, like “The Pere Marquette Depot, Bay City: Sustainable Stewardship through Multiple Historic Treatment Approaches,” and others focus on what tools are available to aid in preservation efforts, like “Conservation and Historic Preservation Easements: Protecting the Land and the Buildings.”

Want to stretch your legs? Take a walking tour. There are several, so whether “Experience the Richness and Diversity of Downtown Ann Arbor’s Church Architecture” whets your whistle, or you’d rather take a combo bus/walking tour of historic Ann Arbor and the “Homes and Gardens of the Old West Side”, you’re in luck. There’s even a session on how “Paranormal Investigations can Complement Your Restoration.”

This year’s MHPN conference promises to be very exciting and timely. As our environmental concerns grow more poignant, and we face the prospect of drastic and inevitable change, we see our paradigm shifting. We feel our thought process change from a rigid model that gets us strictly from point A to point B without taking the consequence of that journey and all of its causes and effects into consideration to one that moves in all different directions, calls and responds in an organic way. We in essence are coming back from our divorce with nature. We are beginning to think and act with the knowledge that everything is connected and what affects one of us eventually affects all of us.

It is in that spirit that the MHPN conference this year brings the interdependent relationship between historic preservation and sustainability into focus. Adaptive reuse and sustainable rehabilitation of historic structures are very tangible ways to illustrate this relationship, but of course there is also the intangible to consider. Whenever we preserve a historic structure or landscape, we do honor to where we came from and we keep that space in order to inform and inspire our future.

Many relationships between historic preservation organizations and environmental stewardship organizations have been created in the last several years, with much success. This relationship has indeed cultivated reinvigoration of local communities and in many cases has helped to stimulate local economies as well.

Registration is open to anybody, and there are several options to choose from. Whether you’re in for the whole weekend or are just interested in experiencing the conference a la carte, you can register for whatever fits your schedule. Walk-in registration is welcome.

More Confessions of a (very) curvy girl will come out every Wednesday. Also, look out for the two new “Curvy Girl” supplements, “Unfit” and “Food/Foe Thought.”

Elizabeth Palmer is the Customer Advocate at AnnArbor.com as well as a contributor. She writes about food and food traditions, sustainable development and her experiences as a curvy girl. She has a bachelor’s degree in photography and is finishing her masters in historic preservation. Elizabeth also teaches a course on sustainable development at Eastern Michigan University.

You can contact Elizabeth by emailing her at elizabethpalmer@annarbor.com.