Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate

Edited by Sandra Piesik (Thames and Hudson, compact edition 2023)

Vernacular architecture is generally understood as referring to domestic, native and Indigenous structures. So it is perhaps of little surprise that in our contemporary scape—dominated by forms of monolithic scale and proportion—methods of producing vernacular architecture have often been overlooked and marginalized. Yet, as a strand of construction indebted to a rich history of making, the vernacular’s sphere of influence can be seen as an important response to the growing climate crisis. Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate, assembled by architect-author Sandra Piesik, offers an insightful overview of age-old methods of production, and supports and celebrates present-day efforts that follow in their wake. 

Unconcerned with its own behemoth scale (the framing as a ‘compact’ edition referencing a shrinking from an earlier version with larger type), Piesik’s text navigates the breadth of global vernacular construction, convening an encyclopaedic collection of references with considered commentary. Ordered around climatic typologies—tropical,
dry, temperate, continental, and polar—the book provides concise introductions by regional experts, inviting consideration of a world foreign to many who operate within the narrow scope of contemporary architecture. Crucial to the book is the vast array of photos that support the edited essays; although these have a somewhat domineering presence, they are effective in facilitating an understanding of how the texts should be read. Through the displayed architectures, the kaleidoscopic nature of the vernacular shines: the volume surveys a truly global footprint, from the global South to Iceland and the Arctic, and from rural environments to Brazil’s favelas. 

The integrated essays penned by experts span a legion of fields. A text by Anna Yu Mainicheva, ‘Homesteads of Northern and Central Russia’, appears in the continental section alongside a contribution from Aldona Jonaitis examining the ‘Indigenous Dwellings of America’s Subarctic and Northwest Coast’. Beyond challenging political barriers, this careful placement of content plays a significant role in articulating the volume’s ambition, demonstrating relevance across a global scale. Similarly, words by the likes of Ronald van Oers point to the dynamism within the vernacular; his case study surveys the plethora of influences on chattel houses and the timber architecture of the Caribbean. Texts by Canadian scholars Tammy Gaber and Miriam Ho are also included, looking respectively at vernacular architecture in Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Towards the book’s end, an appendix—perhaps better understood as a sixth ‘chapter’—offers a modern account of the vernacular by presenting contemporary references. Francis Kéré’s Gando Primary School Complex represents arguably the most lauded example. However, less celebrated—yet equally impressive—works include Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architect’s Rufisque Women’s Centre, and Architype’s Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia. Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons’ Muir Craig Cottage is also included in the mix. These aid in providing a rich register of the vernacular, and, yet again, evidence its global multiplicity. Despite a somewhat muted presence against the dazzling imagery, the short texts that accompany these examples facilitate an ease of understanding, supporting the volume’s ‘lessons to be learned’ approach. Like the short essays in the main section, the pockets of texts throughout the book work hard and add depth. 

In sum, Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate is a well-constructed compendium. The volume provides a highly considered overview of the vernacular, while retaining a format which is both approachable and inviting. While perhaps imagined to be read across its breadth, the weight of the tome makes it even more valuable as a reference document. For those committed to a different kind of architecture and a non-extractive approach, this book is a useful starting point, ably demonstrating that a ‘new’ way of thinking can be found in the ‘old’. 

As appeared in the November 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Reside: Contemporary West Coast Houses
By Michael Prokopow (Figure.1, 2024)

A decade ago, Greg Bellerby’s book The West Coast Modern House: Vancouver Residential Architecture chronicled key developments in West Coast Modern architecture, including several contemporary practices continuing that legacy. The present volume is positioned as a continuation, foregrounding new voices in a selection curated by architect Clinton Cuddington. 

The 34 projects range in size and geography, from Openspace’s expansive 8,200-square-foot Trail’s Edge residence, on a forested site in Whistler, BC, to Simcic Architecture’s 450-square-foot Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency, which occupies a platform that also includes a restored 1927 wood cabin that serves as an artist’s studio. A group of city buildings spans from single family homes by architects including A A Robins and Haeccity Studio Architecture, to the multi-unit East Georgia Flats by AIRstudio with Birmingham and Wood.

Prokopow visited each of the houses in the book, sometimes accompanied by architects and hosted by owners, and sometimes on his own, retrieving keys from hiding spots in sheds. His thoughtful commentary touches on the history and culture of the different sites, the composition and materials of each project, and the experience of moving through the houses—often emerging onto a top floor with expansive views of nature. 

Both Prokopow and Cuddington are at pains to address the elephant in the room: what is the relevance of a book on luxury homes in the midst of a housing affordability crisis? Cuddington writes: “Each practitioner [included in the selection] strives on a daily basis to engage with projects that further an appropriate community response to [the evolving set of pressures placed upon residential architecture], inform a larger discussion of affordable housing, and increase the domain of who can inform that work […] In some way, each has also acknowledged that they struggle with the privilege inherent in this typology, but embrace a sincere goal of using the platform of this publication to grow a conversation of those who have not been at the table, and in service of those who have not had an opportunity to benefit from the response.”

For Prokopow, “these houses say much about the states of residential architecture in British Columbia, and about the place itself”—including the inherently elitist, settler-colonialist contexts that produced the houses themselves. “Mindful of the larger histories of architecture and society, it is possible to engage with the actuality of a house and its multiple meanings,” he adds—from its aesthetic power and form, to its applications of current technology, to the philosophical statement that these projects offer about the meaning of home.

-Elsa Lam

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Designed Landscapes: 37 Key Projects

By Alan Tate and Marcella Eaton (Routledge, London & New York, 2024)

REVIEW Ron Williams

Fresh off the press, Designed Landscapes: 37 Key Projects, by Alan Tate and Marcella Eaton, is a beautiful and fascinating volume, and a pleasure to read. The book is a profusely illustrated exploration of a series of outstanding landscapes, all designed by human hand—though many are located within, and skillfully exploit or complement, the natural or vernacular landscapes in which they are located. 

The authors, both longtime professors in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba, previously collaborated on the second edition of Great City Parks (Routledge, 2015). The format of their new book is similar to that of their earlier work: a kaleidoscope of extremely varied projects, held together by a common theme. While Great City Parks focused on urban parks in North America and western Europe, the focus has been greatly expanded in the current work to include landscapes of twelve different project types, varying from private gardens to campus plans. 

A return to primary sources

Designed Landscapes is organized according to project types, allowing readers to compare and contrast the responses of different places, times, and cultures to similar design challenges and opportunities. Each type is represented by two, three or four contrasting projects, typically chosen from different countries and representing, overall, a wide variety of geographical locations. 

The projects span a vast time period, from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain (13th-15th centuries), all the way up to innovative projects from the first decade of the 21st century. They include such familiar faces as Vaux-le-Vicomte in France and Paley Park in New York City, along with lesser-known projects that merit attention, such as Chatham Village in Pittsburgh. 

Projects are primarily situated in the United States and western Europe, along with a sprinkling of Asian selections and two projects from Canada: Cornelia Oberlander and Arthur Erickson’s Robson Square in Vancouver (1972-83) and the Promenade Samuel-De Champlain in Quebec City, conceived by the Commission de la Capitale du Québec (CCNQ), designed by the consortium of Daoust Lestage, WAA Inc., and Option Aménagement, and realized over two decades beginning in 2002.

Grouping projects from different venues by type allows the reader to see and understand patterns of design that would be less evident from a sequential or territorial exposition. I was fascinated, for example, by the striking integration of Renaissance squares into pre-existing medieval town layouts in Pienza, Italy; Nancy, northern France; and Edinburgh in Scotland, all grouped under the rubric of “Urban Landscapes.”

Each project is described in a stand-alone essay of some six to ten pages; typically, the social and geographical context of its creation are explored, followed by a profile of the personages who gave rise to the project. Each text then provides a thoughtful analysis of the project’s principal design features, site organization, and vocabulary of materials and planting. Besides this in-depth analysis, each densely packed essay includes all the dates, names, facts, and references needed to satisfy the most enthusiastic and inquisitive scholar. As one would expect, Tate and Eaton identify and provide considerable information about the designers of their designed landscapes, including household names like Olmsted and Vaux, André le Notre, and Hideo Sasaki—and many who are relatively obscure despite their distinguished work.

In researching their book, the authors have followed the dictum of John Brinckerhoff (J.B.) Jackson that the primary sources to be studied are the landscapes themselves. They have personally visited and explored in depth all the projects that they discuss, and have taken all but one or two of the extensive colour photos that accompany each essay. While five of the projects in Designed Landscapes appeared in the authors’ previous book, it’s nice to see that they have recently revisited and rephotographed even these overlapping projects. A special treat—especially for freehand aficionados—is the inclusion of pen-and-ink site plans of each project, hand-drawn by University of Manitoba doctoral student Mojtaba (Moin) Hassanzadeh. On occasion, the overall site plan of a project is supplemented by a larger-scale sectoral plan, a cross-section, or an axonometric view. 

Lessons for designers

The book concludes with a discussion of specific lessons that the authors wish to impart to readers. Recognizing and making the most of a project’s existing site conditions is high on their list: conditions first regarded as negative may prove to be highly advantageous, as at the abandoned limestone quarry that became the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris. They also emphasize the importance of historical context, and its evocation in the present-day landscape through the use of symbolic references and the inclusion of heritage elements. They underline the ability of landscape to establish powerful spatial structures through landform and vegetation (like the “apparently endless” Long Meadow in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park) and highlight the importance of strong positive relationships between client and designer, and among members of multi-professional design teams, as essential ingredients of successful landscape design. 

Finally, they explore the unique role of time in landscape projects. Tate and Eaton consider landscape design to be “a long-term endeavour that never ends.” While buildings are at their best on Day One and subsequently deteriorate under all the forces of nature and man (gravity, rust, wear and tear), a well-maintained landscape can continue to mature and improve for centuries. The authors note, for instance, that urban spaces are likely to last longer than the buildings that enclose them.  

Beyond providing a multi-dimensional and in-depth study of a broad spectrum of outstanding man-made landscapes, the book promotes understanding and preservation of designed landscapes generally, and inspires designers to achieve a high quality of work in their own projects. 

Who are its readers likely to be? The authors’ primary target would naturally consist of professionals and students in the fields of landscape architecture and urban design or city planning. In fact, many of the projects examined are studied in courses on landscape and planning history, though not always at the level of detail one sees in Designed Landscapes. Architects and students of architecture will also find this book fascinating: almost all the sites illustrated in the book are either settings for buildings; are enclosed by buildings; or feature incidental buildings such as follies, gazebos, or viewing pavilions, and provide many lessons in how to integrate buildings and landscapes. Beyond the world of professional and student designers, even the enthusiastic amateur or studious tourist will find this book highly readable, and a helpful guide while visiting the locations where the projects are situated. 

A splendid reference

How does this book fit into the existing literature on parks and designed landscapes? While it contains many historical examples, it is definitely not a systematic landscape history book that follows a clear through-line. It is, in fact, a compendium, defined by Oxford Languages as “a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, especially in a book or other publication.” As such, Designed Landscapes will fit in well on the same bookshelf as Edmund Bacon’s Design of Cities (The Viking Press/Macmillan, 1961), Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe’s The Landscape of Man (Thames and Hudson, 1975), Allan Jacobs’s Great Streets (MIT Press, 1995) and Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Towns and Buildings (Harvard University Press,1951). All of these books include detailed drawings and descriptions of various town-planning, landscape and architectural projects; but surprisingly, they only rarely overlap with Tate and Eaton’s book, which largely explores new ground. 

Like these classics, Designed Landscapes provides a splendid reference to specific projects that can suggest general principles of design to readers, or inspire them in approaching similar design challenges. It deserves an honoured position in their company.

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Constructing Health

Tye Farrow (University of Toronto Press, 2024)

REVIEW Laure Nolte

For a moment, recall a memory of when you felt instantly at ease when you entered a building. You may have felt your heart rate slow down as you took a deep breath. Perhaps your nervous system regulated as the stress and noise of the outside world faded, and your senses gradually attuned to the space. A glimmer of light and shadow may have brought a moment of delight, a turn of a corner revealing a compelling materiality you began to trace with your fingers. 

Whether we are aware of it or not, the environments we inhabit have an impact on the mind and body; on our cognition and physiology. For over two decades, architect and urban designer Tye Farrow, founder of Farrow Partners, has asked how meaningful, health-generating person-to-place relationships can be nurtured through the medium of architecture. His new book, Constructing Health, offers a touchstone for designers, clients, and others embarking on a similar journey. 

Farrow invites readers to reframe their understanding of what buildings can do by posing a series of questions, such as: “How do buildings make us feel, and how can they make us feel better?” A guiding concept is salutogenesis, a term proposed by sociologist Aaron Antonovsky to describe the factors and conditions that promote health and well-being, rather than focusing solely on the causes and treatment of disease. Farrow suggests that for most of the past 5,000 years, health was valued as an asset to be maintained through a holistic understanding of the intricate connections between mind, body, environment and community. Recently, however, many aspects of the built environment have been constructed in ways that deviate from these values. Farrow’s solution is to actively construct environments that enhance optimal health.

What exactly does this mean? Rather than offering prescriptive instructions, Constructing Health explores salutogenic possibilities in an open-ended way. The book’s first section is an overview of contributing theories, ideas and concepts that are part of the emerging field of salutogenic design, from thinking about environments as a source of enrichment to a deep dive into understanding beyond the five senses.

The next section offers case studies on themes of city-making, living places, educational spaces, and healthcare environments. These convincingly demonstrate how inhabited spaces can have a measurable impact on human health, performance, and experience. Take, for example, the radiation treatment rooms of Thunder Bay Regional Hospital (designed by Salter Farrow Pilon Architects, of which Farrow Partners is a successor firm), a space where natural light is rarely possible due to strict health and safety requirements. The design team delved into the dynamics of radiation energy dissipation, realizing that altering its trajectory could limit its spread. Taking cues from art galleries, where natural light is both ideal for viewing art and potentially damaging to it, they integrated a skylight into the treatment area, bathing an interior garden below in natural light. This resulting environment fosters a sense of hope and healing for patients and staff alike.

The final part of Constructing Health empowers designers with a reading list of fifty suggested books, as well as plans, sections, and perspective drawings of projects presented earlier in the book. 

The average Canadian spends 90% of their time indoors, and in the post-pandemic era anxiety, stress, and depression are at all-time highs. Now, more than ever, it is important to understand that as architects, designers and stewards of the built environment, we have an ethical responsibility to create environments that are restorative for the body and mind, activate optimal well-being, and are health-generating. As Farrow asserts, when it comes to whether a building causes health, the answer is either “yes” or “no,” never in-between—a building is never neutral. Comprehensive and compelling, this book is a guiding light towards design as a healing modality.

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Fundamentals of Planning Cities for Healthy Living 

BY Avi Friedman and Alexandra Pollock (Anthem Press, 2024)

REVIEW Ian Chodikoff 

Avi Friedman and Alexandra Pollock believe we should consider our cities as “exercise machines.” In Fundamentals of Planning Cities for Healthy Living, they critically examine urban design’s integral role in shaping public health outcomes. This book aims to support the work of design professionals, often emphasizing the self-evident: our built environment directly influences lifestyle choices related to physical activity, nutrition, social interactions, public health and climate change. 

The book highlights the disparity in health outcomes observed in underinvested urban neighbourhoods. The lack of access to recreational spaces, healthy food options, and safe pedestrian routes exacerbates issues like obesity, diabetes, and mental health disorders, especially in lower-income neighbourhoods. The authors call for a multidimensional approach that includes strategies like food security, active mobility, green spaces, and inclusive public places. The book also stresses the need for greater cooperation between government, private and healthcare sectors, nonprofits, and more effective public awareness campaigns, underlining the procedural tactics necessary to move the needle for healthier outcomes for our cities and urban populations. The authors recognize that urban design needs to be justified in economic, environmental, and sociological terms, and actors in any community will disagree on how to prioritize action. I would have appreciated a deeper discussion on the process of working with those disparate actors rather than a checklist of healthy design outcomes. Nevertheless, case studies, such as the Grow Community in Washington or the Skaftkarr community in Porvoo, Finland, provide concrete examples of how cities can foster active living and social well-being. Other examples, like Edmonton as a “Winter City,” are presented as a paradigm for designing urban environments that remain vibrant and accessible year-round despite challenging weather or geographic conditions.

One of the book’s strengths lies in its historical analysis, tracing the inexorable decline of planning for health, which has only contributed to other global challenges, such as warming climates, aging populations, and widening income disparities: this is an excellent argument for re-integrating health considerations into contemporary urban planning.

It is reassuring to read that the authors allude to the critical role technology and policy play in advancing health-centred urban design, from using digital apps to enhance access to health services and information, to zoning and land-use regulations. 

Concluding with a call to action for urban planners and architects to adopt a holistic, life-cycle approach to planning that accounts for the changing needs and dynamics of urban populations, the book provides insights and strategies for creating healthier, more equitable urban environments. By reading this book, the reader will become more informed and knowledgeable about the profound impact that thoughtful, intentional design can have on the health of urban populations.

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Winner of a 2024 RAIC Architectural Journalism and Media Award

Founded in 2015, The Site Magazine is an independent journal created by a collective of registered Canadian architects, researchers, and educators driven by a shared commitment and passion for fostering discourse as a way of progressing community and practice. The Site publishes thematic issues that address diverse topics pertaining to our built environment. Through a range of writing types, design projects, and visual formats, each issue advocates for a critical consideration of the layered relations of our built environment, posed from varied perspectives, including the cultural, political, formal, social, and ecological.

The Edit—The Site Magazine’s most ambitious publication to date—is an active retelling of the built environment in its content, graphics, and editorial direction. The Site’s open call sought to address cities as artifacts of colonial and corporate expansion, and to dismantle the tectonics of inequality. It asked: Who are public spaces for? What underlying assumptions are enmeshed in the fabric of our everyday surroundings? More importantly, the call asked: Which design tools might destabilize structural inequality? 

“Editing is a human exercise in representation, something we all do in order to craft a perceived, ideal outcome,” writes editorial lead Amrit Phull. “We edit our thoughts before speaking them aloud, just as we edit our digital profiles, social networks, and physical environments to reflect our needs and aspirations. Cities are in a continual state of erasure and reconstruction; nations are built upon places and peoples renamed, restructured, or removed. History is renegotiated and reforged in aeternum. At any scale and in any moment, we are mutually enmeshed in the constant, complex process of the edit.”

“Each page in the publication was the result of considered curatorial decisions around what gets to be included, how it is shown, what is left out, and how to question the editorial team’s own ways of seeing,” write the editorial team, which also included Miriam Ho, Ruth Jones, and Aisling O’Carroll. “The built environment is never apolitical, and design can ensure that public space is not a monolith.” 

A workbook by Amrit Phull, Srishti Bose and Cara Michell frames the issue, prompting readers to identify gaps in collective records and reframe the systems we operate in. The issue was designed by Carey van der Zalm, with cover art by Kathleen Fu. It includes texts, artworks, and architectural research by Aytak Dibavar, Jishnu Bandyopadhyay, Biko Mandela Gray, Linda Zhang, Taryn Wiens, Lan Florence Yee, Traumnovelle, WAI Architecture Think Tank, Amina Lalor, Danielle Desjarlais, Reanna Merasty, Naomi Ratte, Desiree Thériault, Sunita Nigam, Humanics Lab, Openlab, and Sarah Deyong. The Site is published by Nicky Bruun-Meyer and Michael Robert Taylor.

Jury Comment :: The Edit examines the power dynamics within the built environment and provides critiques of the inequalities embedded in our world. It presents an encompassing perspective of today’s political, cultural, and social views and challenges, intertwined with carefully curated architectural topics. 

It calls for change and promotes architecture through a critical lens, offering a well-executed take on issues impacting design.

The essays present emerging ideas with significant impact on the built environment and provide much-needed critical dialogue. They highlight the roots of colonialism, racism, and capitalism and encourage us to imagine and create alternative practices that rebuild our world in better ways.

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Platform.Middle—Architecture for Housing the 99%

By 5468796 Architecture (Arquine, 2024)

Winnipeg architecture firm 5468796 is known for working outside of the norm—the puzzle-box Bloc 10, the flying-saucer-like 62M—and their first publication is no exception. Rather than a traditional monograph, platform.MIDDLE is a box set of four volumes. Together, the publication’s components distill lessons learned from 5468796’s portfolio of missing middle housing projects, offering context and practical tools for architects to address housing affordability.

The first of the four books, titled platform.MIDDLE, reports from a symposium of the same name held at IIT’s College of Architecture in 2019. The symposium explored the current state of multi-family housing in North America, and architects’ role in shaping its future. The paper version is structured around illustrated summaries of the presentations by architects, developers, and educators who participated in the symposium. Especially engaging are the interludes between these summaries, where the transcripts from panel discussions are excerpted. These discussions point to the complexities of the housing challenge, and the imperatives to shift policy, harness data, and reform regulations, among other drivers for change.

Personal stories are interwoven through the conversations. Montreal architect Rami Bebawi, for instance, recalls meeting 5468796 principals Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic soon after founding KANVA with Tudor Radulescu. “We met them the first time we had ever won a medal. Out of the blue, they shared everything they knew. That stuck with us.”

That spirit of sharing is at the core of the next two volumes. The slender platform.MACRO is a primer to the many policy and financial tools that affect the affordability of housing: from zoning strategies and government investment, to alternative ownership models and hybrid housing policies. While beyond the scope of the architect, these systemic issues profoundly shape the profession’s work.

Aspiring and practicing architects, as well as others engaged in producing housing, will find the third and fourth volumes, platform.MICRO and projects.MODELLING to be the most directly relevant. In the former, 5468796 offers a toolkit of design strategies for architects producing housing: from introducing interstitial courtyards and plazas that make the most of communal outdoor space, to creating adjoining suites to skirt zoning by-laws that mandate maximum unit counts. These strategies are illustrated with their own work, which is presented in greater detail in the last volume.

Driven by a sense of purpose, this publication is not so much a manifesto or pure celebration of 5468796’s work, as it is a guidebook that aims to open-source knowledge gleaned from that work for a greater cause. “It is our hope that the following micro strategies and solutions will allow others to leapfrog the lessons we have spent uncovering since 2007,” writes Hurme in the introduction to platform.MICRO. “This head start will hopefully allow more of us to take on the housing and environmental crises on a larger scale through the mid-scale multi-family building typology, and give architects some practical, straightforward options to increase livability and quality of the spaces they design, while still meeting the financial goals of their clients.” 

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Manitoba Women in Design

By Marieke Gruwel (Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, 2024)

Manitoba is an important site for the history of women architects in Canada. Between 1920 and 1960, the University of Manitoba graduated the highest number of women who became registered architects, totalling a third of Canadian-educated women registrants at that time. 

Manitoba Women in Design offers a snapshot of dozens of these women, from Manitoba’s first registered woman architect, Elizabeth Lord (née Campbell), to the first woman graduate of the University’s landscape architecture program, Cynthia Cohlmeyer. 

Despite facing the usual stereotypes—School of Architecture director Milton S. Osborne observed that “there is little doubt but that the most of them [women] will be more interested in domestic architecture than in any other phase of architectural design”—Gruwal documents women designing airports and railway stations, working on metropolitan development plans, and frequenting construction sites. 

The unusually high number of women was influenced by the presence of the University of Manitoba’s diploma course, and later baccalaureate, in interior design. But Gruwal’s research makes it clear that this wasn’t a course in mere “decoration.” It was headed by Joan Harland, a graduate of the school of architecture, who later played a key role in establishing accreditation standards for interior design as a profession. Several of the programs top graduates were hired by GBR; Marjorie Pritchard (née McNulty) designed the interiors of the Winnipeg International Airport Terminal; Margaret Stinson (née King) was responsible for the interior design of Winnipeg’s new City Hall. 

Gruwal writes that her book is only “part of the beginning” of understanding the role of women in shaping the province’s built environment. “There are so many more women whose contributions must still be researched and acknowledged.”

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The arrival of the new book series Building Arguments, a collaboration between Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture that showcases the written work of Canadian architects, is a welcome sign of cultural maturity in the Canadian architecture scene.

Apart from Dalhousie Architecture Press, whose publication program received an RAIC award in 2023, most academic and institutional presses across the country have been derelict in documenting and building an understanding of Canada’s architectural culture and history. This new series takes seriously the ideas and investigations of Canadian designers and offers up writing that is certainly new to me—and likely would have been familiar only to the most specialized scholars of modern Canadian architectural history. 

The first two volumes in the series, Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems (2022) and Cornelia Hahn Oberlander on Pedagogical Playgrounds (2023), gather writings spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s by each designer, with introductory essays. The books themselves are elegant slim volumes, printed on a coloured paper which, along with a matching cover, gives a monochrome appearance and the promise of a rainbow on your bookshelf as the series progresses. I don’t often think of colour choices as editorial, but in this instance, I can’t think of a better match than cool gray for the Erickson volume and the warm yellow of the Oberlander book.

And what about the essays themselves? All the good intentions and archival value would fall flat if the writing wasn’t interesting. Fortunately, these first two volumes in the series are excellent. Each is prefaced with an essay; Jane Mah Hutton’s introduction to Cornelia Oberlander’s writing is especially engaging. Oberlander’s and Erickson’s writings themselves are remarkably fresh, perhaps a consequence of the social currents that both designers engage directly in their writing. 

Oberlander’s evocation of the “conserver society” in “Planning for Play Everywhere” as a counter to the emergent consumer society of the 1960s has a deep resonance with contemporary design concerns. Her profound understanding of the history of pedagogy and play in “A Short History of Outdoor Play Spaces” underpins her work on the landscapes of childhood she describes. Similarly, Erickson evinces a deep historical knowledge in his essay on “The University: A New Visual Environment,” and his acknowledgement of the pivotal importance of integrating Indigenous knowledge into contemporary design in his “McGill University Convocation Address” would not seem out of place today. 

Oberlander’s and Erickson’s collections of essays aren’t prescient so much as they point to a disengagement from social advocacy that followed the collapse of “capital M” Modernism. In retrospect, the inward turn of much architectural writing towards theory in the years after these texts were written seems as dull and reactionary as the commercial forms of postmodernism from that time.   

Building Arguments is especially notable for its focus on writing as a clarifying complement to the built-work legacy of these two giants of Canadian Modernism. That architects should take seriously—and engage directly with—culture through writing is the unspoken ethos of this consequential new series. 

A book launch for the Building Arguments series will be held at the CCA, Montreal on Thursday, November 16. For more information, visit https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/92490/book-launch-building-arguments-series

See all articles in the November issue 

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Evidently, a lot can happen in ten years, which is the time since Harold “Hal” Kalman and Robin Ward last updated their popular Exploring Vancouver—a keystone volume that has been re-issued nearly every decade since 1974. It is remarkable to look at the newest version in comparison to earlier ones, including the black-and-white edition from almost fifty years ago. The past decade, in particular, has seen an astonishing number of new entries to the book: from a plethora of new residential high-rises by an international who’s who of architects, to several new buildings at UBC, along with new developments by local First Nations.

It is this last group of entries in particular that the book’s authors call out in their introduction to this edition. Following the lead of Vancouver’s pledge to Truth and Reconciliation in 2014, this is the first edition that highlights some of the grievous wrongs that have been perpetuated since the founding of the city—in particular, that the downtown peninsula was not “empty land” as the land commissioner of the CPR declared and had immortalized on the corner of the downtown street named after him. As clearly noted on the first page of this book’s introduction: “The land was not ‘empty’—First Nations had been here for millennia.”

In acknowledgment of the damaging history of colonialism, the book no longer begins with Gastown, accompanied by a picture of John “Gassy Jack” Deighton’s statue in Maple Tree Square, as had been the case in 2012. Instead, the new edition puts False Creek at the start: the book’s authors have chosen Expo ’86, which was staged on those former industrial lands, as the event to frame the book’s narrative and nearly four hundred featured buildings. The introduction is perhaps one of the most comprehensive histories of planning in Vancouver and its region to-date, even more than Frances Bula‘s recent introduction to Larry Beasley’s Vancouverism, specifically because this new edition followed the release of the controversial Broadway Plan. The opening text is particularly strong in documenting the city’s history since the sale of the Expo lands in 1987, when Vancouver planner Ray Spaxman and City Council worked with developer Concord Pacific and local constituents to create what would become one of North America’s most vibrant, walkable communities.

From CityPlan to EcoDensity, from Vancouverism to the new Broadway Plan, Vancouver has seen seismic shifts in its planning sensibilities since 2012, and Kalman and Ward have chronicled the landscapes that have emerged along the way—from the new communities growing up in Olympic Village (now just “The Village”) to the bustling campus in the False Creek Flats where Emily Carr University has made its new home, designed by Diamond Schmitt and Chernoff Thompson Architects. 

As well, the book includes some of the many new buildings constructed at UBC, including Tallwood by Acton Ostry Architects, which at the time of its construction in 2017 was the tallest hybrid mass timber building in the world. Other new buildings included in the ten additional pages on UBC include the Nest by DIALOG and B+H Architects, Formline’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, a new aquatic centre by MJMA and Acton Ostry Architects, a biodiversity museum and research centre by Patkau Architects, and a pharmaceutical sciences building by Saucier + Perrotte with HCMA. The next edition, one anticipates, will provide an update on the recent seismic upgrades to the Museum of Anthropology, the great masterwork by Arthur Erickson which anchors the west side of the campus.

By presenting False Creek as the starting point for the book, the usual suspects of Gastown, Chinatown, and Strathcona are able to follow without much ado, with the downtown CBD and West End still rounding out the book’s core framework, as it has for close to five decades. As a past architectural walking tour guide for the AIBC who led variations of these six walks, I have been watching the transformation of the downtown and environs with interest since the late nineties, and was very curious to see which recent buildings the authors would be able to include at the time of the book’s publishing. The final selection includes Bjarke Ingels Group and DIALOG’s Vancouver House, Revery’s Butterfly, Kengo Kuma and Merrick Architecture’s Alberni, and Herzog and de Meuron and Perkins&Will’s design for a new Vancouver Art Gallery.

By consolidating some of the chapters from the previous edition, the authors have been able to reduce the previous fourteen walks to ten. The tenth tour in the book requires a car as it covers a wide geographic area, including Surrey, Richmond, New Westminster, Port Moody, and Burnaby. This section is a substantial addition to the book, providing for several new buildings atop Mount Burnaby at SFU, along with a num­ber of buildings in Surrey’s growing civic precinct, including its main library by Revery.

As a resident of New Westminster, I appreciated the inclusion of the Anvil Centre by HCMA and MCM, along with the new Sapperton District adjacent to the Royal Columbian Hospital, an often overlooked transit-oriented development masterplanned by Henriquez Partners Architects. Like its older cousin at New Westminster Station, Sapperton will be home to four new residential towers at its build-out, and has turned the area into a vibrant, walkable community. 

Like the story of False Creek, the Expo Line anchors another narrative thread, as its expansion to include the Millennium, Evergreen, and Canada Lines has allowed for Metro Vancouver to remain a fifteen-minute city. The new Broadway Line is also mentioned several times in the current edition, particularly as it enables the Broadway Plan. As the book’s authors make clear, this new plan will potentially affect some 500 blocks along the Broadway corridor, currently home to twenty-five percent of the city’s rental housing stock. Perhaps the game changer here will be the arrival of Indigenous development on the Heather and Jericho lands, along with the Squamish nation’s Sen’ákw, designed by Revery with Kasian, which has already broken ground at the southern foot of the Burrard Street Bridge.

Kalman and Ward note that the most unprecedented result of Truth and Reconciliation, “unforeseen by CityPlan and EcoDensity (or previous editions of this book), is that First Nations would assert their rights and initiate development.” They ask: “Will these initiatives shift the dynamics of real estate development in Vancouver? They will certainly test the sincerity of the City’s 2014 pledge of reconciliation.”

The results of these new developments will doubtless be documented in a future edition. Meanwhile, the fifth edition offers a hopeful narrative of moving into the future together by building upon the lessons of our past. In the spirit of Expo ’86, this positive motion continues to propel this city forward to becoming a place we can all call home.

See all articles in the November issue 

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Modern Architecture: A Planetary Warming History

By Hans Ibelings (The Architecture Observer, 2023)
REVIEW Graham Livesey

Hans Ibelings’s latest publication, Modern Architecture: A Planetary Warming History, is presented as a “rough sketch of a proposed history of modern architecture.” It is a timely concept, given the role that modern buildings, cities, and infrastructure have played in causing the current environmental crisis. There is also no doubt that there is a need for new interpretations of modern architectural history: ones that would augment and challenge the well-worn narratives found in standard texts by writers like Kenneth Frampton and William J.R. Curtis. By drawing from recent literature and trawling through historical case studies, Ibelings attempts to chart a new reading of history that focuses on architecture and planetary warming since the late 18th century. 

As an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and the author of many books, Ibelings is well-positioned for undertaking this daunting task. The book in its current version is a novel-sized paperback, with 400 heavily illustrated pages set in large print. It presents several chapters that trace topics such as global warming, climate, cities, and ecology back to the Industrial Revolution. Beyond short introductory statements, the book is composed largely as a cinematic barrage of projects and conceptual proposals, some well-known, some more obscure. In PDF form, the graphic design presents a continuous reel of material. In print, however, dozens of images are disconcertingly sliced horizontally in two.

In the opening chapter, Ibelings presents various projects, books, and drawings, beginning with Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton (1784), that trace an evolving understanding of the planet as an ecosystem. This is followed by an overview of environmental alternatives to the energy-consuming environments produced by modern architecture—the background to contemporary green architecture. In two chapters on the city, the author examines climatic effects on urban environments, and presents urban schemes that integrate urban settlement and greenspace, often at a regional level. Ibelings stresses that the “Great Acceleration” and “De-colonization” after the Second World War have resulted in the Anthropocene—the current age where human activities have altered about 97% of the world’s land mass, excluding Antarctica.

Elsewhere in the book, Ibelings tackles large and impactful infrastructure projects, key texts that foreshadow our current situation, and concepts of nature and anthropocentrism. He concludes with a section on projects that are driven by ecology, and points out that, ultimately, all buildings are ecological and can be understood as such. 

The book is a massive compendium of ideas, ranging from negatively impactful works of infrastructure to visionary “green” publications and projects. And while Ibelings challenges the legacy of modernity, it seems that at some level, he still admires its many accomplishments. The current framework for the book could benefit from both clarification and expansion, and in particular, a deepened overall discussion that is more closely tied to examples. Can the sketch presented in Modern Architecture: A Planetary Warming History be developed into a more resolved argument? We can certainly hope so.

Graham Livesey (FRAIC) is a Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.

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Innate Terrain

By Alissa North (University of Toronto Press, 2022)

REVIEW Jason Brijraj

Landscape architect and scholar Alissa North is no stranger to giving her field a platform to shine. Her symposium at the University of Toronto, Innate Terrain, first set out to assess the state of contemporary landscape across Canada in 2010. It began to put a spotlight on the voices of both established and emerging talent.

More than a decade later, a book has emerged that builds from the foundation of that symposium, and it’s essential reading for designers with an interest in landscape. While many existing resources have typically taken on either regional or cultural approaches to covering the field, North touches on both through a carefully selected compilation of essays written by 22 authors. Together, these texts demonstrate how Canada’s landscape architects are collectively practicing an approach that is focused on the innate qualities of the terrains that their practices are tied to.

Following a foreword by Ron Williams (whose own Canadian Landscape Architecture (2010) is a milestone in the discipline), the first chapters of Innate Terrain are concerned with land use, claims and management. Several essays delve into the crucial role that Indigenous knowledge has played alongside the work of landscape architects in changing policies, acquiring stolen lands from unjust treaties, and implementing successful resource management strategies. Particularly inspiring are projects that show how the combination of scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge can lead to successful outcomes, including saving threatened ecosystems along rivers and documenting ancient histories of the land.  

A second group of chapters examines the field’s impact on shaping ideas of regionalism. After an essay by North that theorizes the contemporary meaning of ‘nature’, sections on projects from the Maritimes, Quebec, and the Prairies allow for an appreciation of the distinct character of work in each of these regions. On the East Coast, maritime deindustrialization has served as a basis for a burgeoning approach to landscape architecture that displays resiliency through playfulness. Quebec, on the other hand, draws on French Canada’s tumultuous history to develop thriving public spaces that speak directly to the marriage of social sustainability and nature. And Prairie projects show how the region is shedding outdated notions of being a vast, monotonous landscape, through approaches centred on the lived experience of the land.

The last part of the book highlights how landscape architects are transforming Canadian cities. New and emerging technologies used in Canadian institutions are lauded for their success in introducing the dynamic factor of ‘time’ into the design process. Further texts examine how Toronto’s landscape architects draw on silviculture to create healthy, long-lasting urban forests, and highlight the transformed waterfronts of both Toronto and Vancouver. A concluding chapter analyzes how landscape architects are learning from the failures of established urban parks to influence the sustainable development of contemporary parks. 

The book comes at a critical time, when reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and the impacts of climate change will have important roles in shaping the future of Canadian landscapes—and Canadian identity. Addressing these issues is the responsibility of everyone who partakes in the design of our built environment, making Innate Terrain an important text for all of the country’s wide array of designers, not just landscape architects.  

The book’s content is, in fact, so far reaching that it acts as a crash course for understanding the past, present and future of the field’s most pertinent issues. Innate Terrain is a welcome addition to the growing canon of texts on Canadian landscape architecture, and is a welcome reading for a range of audiences as diverse as the authors and subject matter that span its pages.

Jason Brijraj is an intern architect working in Toronto with Diamond Schmitt Architects.

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D’Arcy Jones Architects, 2009-2020 

By D’Arcy Jones (Dalhousie Architectural Press, 2022)

EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION BY Trevor Boddy

Barely at the mid-point of his career, D’Arcy Jones is already established as one of Canada’s most inventive designers of houses. As this book demonstrates, Jones is constantly searching for new forms, through reconsiderations of construction and space-making. The re-invention of the idea of the house is, for him, almost an obsession.

How is it that D’Arcy Jones has devised so inventive a series of houses as the 14 shown in this book, so variable in their design? All are different in detail and construction, yet each of them advances the notion of the enclave. One answer might be found in the architect’s biography. It is rare for an architect of his generation to have spent hardly any time working for other firms—in Jones’s case, this included brief periods working with Vancouver’s Nigel Baldwin and Acton Johnson Ostry while he was a student. Many architects, by contrast, spend their careers working out the “anxiety of influence” from former employers or a validated canon of prominent precedents, from which they borrow, too often simplistically. 

It is also worth noting that currently many students do not graduate from Canadian architecture schools until they are over the age of 30, and are often over 40 before achieving professional registration. At this point, most have the responsibilities of families, property, and student debt; these factors can easily combine to make design careers short and conservative. D’Arcy Jones, on the other hand, founded his own firm in his 20s and fulfilled his professional registration while executing his own designs. When designers are not socialized into the habits of others, opportunities for individual invention increase.

This pattern also applies to Jones’s education. After a year in general arts at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, he went on to receive a degree in Environmental Design from that institution in 1995. He then moved to Halifax, where he earned a second bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design Studies from TUNS (now Dalhousie University). Returning to Winnipeg, he completed a professional Master’s in 1999. In that same year, he opened his own design practice, and it has been in operation ever since. His built work was being published in Europe and the United States a mere six years after he founded his firm, extremely early for a Canadian designer. All through his career Jones has immersed himself in unusually wide and deep reading—he is much more likely to cite inspiration from something he has read in the New York Review of Books than that online bible for his generation, dezeen.com. 

Before Jones graduated from the University of Manitoba his parents relocated to Kamloops; they and their new neighbours became his first clients. Subsequently Jones established a partnership in Vancouver with Caralyn Jeffs, an architecture graduate who now works as the primary caregiver for the couple’s three children, including twins; the architect’s empathy for the needs of couples with children is grounded in his own experience, and many of his clients are at the same stage in the family cycle. A sense of community is crucial to Jones. His early practice was boosted by the modest house he designed for his own young family in 2007. Its completion prompted a string of requests for renovations and rebuilds in the same neighbourhood—one of them breathing new air into the tired formula of the split-level rancher, another finding privacy while wedged between larger neighbours, a third raising up a small house to capture light and increase space for a photo-based artist, a landscape architect, and their children. Noting this pattern in his work, Jones explains, “I take families seriously—we listen to them, observe them.”

A house is one of the most complex human inventions. There is no more practical or essential a structure, yet dwellings represent some of the highest cultural and spiritual aspirations. A well-conceived design for a house demands deep understandings of the lives it envelops. As Le Corbusier suggested, houses are “machines for living.” They are also exemplars of sociality, live-in artworks, membranes against the forces of nature, and shelters that nurture personalities. They represent one of the biggest investments that people make. Houses are our castles—though also our prisons, playthings, and our psychoanalysts.

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REVIEW Christian Maidankine

Since taking over On Site Review in 2015, the designers, academics, practitioners, and journalists that make up The Site Collective’s core team have been experimenting with different ways that print media can serve as a forum for architectural ideas. Their first half-dozen editions of The Site Magazine continued the thematic, call-based format of On Site Review. But more recently, readers have been treated to some new formats.

The four slim volumes in the series Deviant Devices are held together by a rubber band notched into their covers. Each volume follows a theme—Perceive, Collect, Translate, and Disperse—exploring how it is practised through physical apparatuses. Together, they inquire: how do designers use tools to understand, collate, and spread their work—and how do these processes become just as important as the information they treat? 

Perceive follows those who use their work to look at the world. Some later analyze this data, while others, such as artist Dan Tapper, value the raw observations. Tapper’s bespoke Machines to Listen to the Sky track electromagnetic sounds in the world’s ionosphere. Collect describes different projects of information recording, including Elaine Ayers’ piece on colour coding in botany—a work that expresses the complications that arise from the deterioration of material samples and information over time. The projects in Translate relay information, including Project Gnomo, a solar clock created by University of Waterloo assistant professor Jonathan Enns that keeps time in digital script, tying together the physical and virtual. The final journal, Disperse, identifies projects involved in the spread of information. It includes the work of Jon Beck, whose surreptitious 3D scans of museum artifacts aim to freely share cultural artefacts with global audiences.

Deviant Devices is a compact yet direct series—highlighting people who have a compelling view of their surroundings, want to gain a further understanding of it, and finally, are moved to share that information with others. 

The Collective’s most recent publication, The Edit, returns to an exploration of the book-a-zine format. It centres the voices of the marginalized, including immigrants, victims of racialized crime, Indigenous groups, and aging populations. The publication explores what “edits”—changes to the built world enacted by conflicting powers—have affected the experiences of these communities. How can those with little agency in the built environment begin, in turn, to “edit” their boundaries, creating a sense of place and greater autonomy for themselves? 

The texts in this issue highlight the importance of building relationships and processes, rather than developing pre-determined solutions—in effect, providing the opportunity for future edits. Amina Lalor’s interview with four editors from the University of Manitoba publication Voices of the Land: Indigenous Design and Planning from the Prairies is particularly powerful. All five individuals note that institutional spaces didn’t acknowledge their Indigenous identities. Founding the Indigenous Design and Planning Student Association and releasing this publication created a space for their presence in the discipline, and has helped make new room for Indigenous youth interested in design. 

The Edit explores new ways of communicating, encouraging the reader to fill out worksheets, remove pages, and post material into their own spaces. As a whole, the issue showcases the need to acknowledge earlier, painful drafts of society—and allows readers to become editors of a more compassionate future.

Christian Maidankine is a Master’s candidate in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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By Olivier Vallerand (McGill – Queens University Press, 2020)

REVIEW Maya Orzechowska

“Gender and sexuality’s influence on the design and use of a space are not essentializing characteristics,” writes Olivier Vallerand, “but two of the multiple lenses through which individuals might understand and navigate the world.” In Unplanned Visitors, Vallerand—a design educator, researcher and writer—challenges the way that gender stereotypes influence design, especially in the assumptions behind domestic space. His open-ended and inspiring case studies provide alternative paths for future architecture.

Vallerand weaves together a history of queer critiques, an exploration of their close and foundational relationship with feminist perspectives, and contemporary examples from art, spatial interventions, and architecture. The rich mix includes projects and ideas by Mark Robbins, John Paul Ricco, Joel Sanders, J Mayer H, Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrés Jaque, QSPACE, and MYCKET. The projects range from timely themes of home and identification, to the integration of work and home, to a model for networks of care in collective housing designed to benefit a more active, engaged, supported and dignified aging process. While architects may assume that the home is an intensely private domain, the examples make it evident that architecture is always political, and shaping more integrated domestic spaces is a political act.

Queer perspectives—and with these, racialized, less affluent, elderly, female, and trans voices, among others—are often silenced in the architectural canon, education and practice. Yet the book exposes how greater consideration as to these voices and users, along with space that is hospitable to a more diverse range of inhabitants, provides opportunities to better reflect societal diversity. The engaging, aspirational examples also reveal how, beyond the home, inclusive design approaches can become catalysts for meaningful changes to the binary conventions of public and private in spatial design. Strategies for changing the status quo include blurring, layering, and rethinking separations between public and private. 

As Vallerand explains, “Using these [outdated constructs of public and private as] oppositions to understand spaces prevents transformation of design paradigms that could improve the well-being of many people who do not—or cannot—correspond to the typical user targeted by normative designs.” He writes, “The research project at the heart of this book thus seeks to assert the potential of a queer perspective on architectural design history, theory and education: a politically responsible approach that can create more inclusive, more integrated, and safer buildings and neighbourhoods for everyone.”

Maya Orzechowska is a Toronto-based architectural designer and an instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research work on homes gives centrality to issues of vulnerability, emotional health, empathy and resource sharing.

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“Something akin to a miracle….” This is how John Fraser, Master Emeritus of Massey College describes his former institution, designed by Ron Thom in the early 1960s. His words might equally have served as the title for Adele Weder’s recently released book, Ron Thom, Architect: The Life of a Creative Modernist. The new publication is a thorough and compassionate portrait of one of Canada’s most creative—and tormented—architects. It stands out as an intimate look at Ron Thom’s life and career, but also as a remarkable foray into the complex political, economic, and professional forces at play in any large-scale architecture project.

The book’s 21 chapters are grouped under two headings: West and East. West refers to Vancouver, where Thom grew up and started his career in architecture. East alludes to Toronto, where he settled until his passing in 1986. In the first chapters, we learn about Thom’s family and about the influence his music-loving mother had over him in his early years, as she relentlessly steered him towards a career as a concert pianist. These ambitions came to an abrupt end as the young Thom discovered the joys of drawing in high school. His true call, however came in 1941, when he enrolled at the Vancouver School of Art. There, he was taught by such luminaries as artists Jack Shadbolt and Bert (B.C.) Binning—both of whom embraced art and architecture as closely allied fields. 

B.C. Binning, in particular, exercised considerable authority amongst his colleagues and students in the early 40s. After spending a year in Europe and some time in New York, Binning returned to his hometown, determined to build a house which would serve as a salon for Vancouver’s arts circle. Beyond being impactful in its time, the resulting home is also one origin point for the current book on Ron Thom. The Binning House was the topic of Adele Weder’s Master’s thesis at UBC; her research eventually led her to co-author a book on Binning, and brought greater awareness to the artist’s influence on the developing scene of West Coast Modernist architects, including Ron Thom. Weder’s growing interest in Thom later led her to curate the exhibition and accompanying catalogue Ron Thom and the Allied Arts, on display at the West Vancouver Museum in 2014 and later at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum. The present book is the final outcome of a relentless fascination and in-depth research into the life of a highly unusual architectural figure.

As Thom started his career, the power scene in Vancouver was well established. “The region’s politicians, lumber barons, mining magnates, and other corporate titans convened [at the Vancouver Club] regularly to eat, drink, smoke, gossip, and conjure up the region’s future,” writes Weder. “Architects invested in its high-priced memberships, which paid off handsomely in relationships and design commissions.” 

Thom began his apprenticeship in 1949 at Sharp & Thompson, Berwick, Pratt—one of Vancouver’s most well-connected and well-established firms. Thom was taken under the wing of Ned Pratt who, according to Weder, “recognized […] that even when people wanted efficiency, they still wanted beauty.” Thom’s talent as an illustrator got him in the door, but his role soon expanded. Beyond being a workplace, TBP, as it was known, was a small society in itself, with passionate young men often staying after hours to explore new ways of building houses. Among them were Thom, Arthur Erickson, and Erickson’s future business partner Geoff Massey. Their “2 a.m. specials” resulted in striking projects, in tune with the lush Pacific vegetation and Vancouver’s amazing coastal views. 

1949 was also the year the Government of Canada launched its Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences, headed by Vincent Massey, who was to have a major influence on the future of the arts in Canada. Serving as Governor General from 1952 to 1959, Massey also happened to be at the head of a wealthy family that would be instrumental in Ron Thom’s eventual move to Toronto.

The 50s were marked by TBP obtaining the commission to design and build the B.C. Electric Building. Weder provides helpful background on the social and political context that surrounded this new job, for which Ron Thom was designated as lead designer. The project, which involved artist B.C. Binning, was highly praised as an original, modern, and elegant take on the highrise office tower. But, reports Weder, it also fed the “rift between Ned [Pratt] and Ron, which had been widening as Ron’s fame grew.” 

“In February of 1960,” writes Weder, “Ron received a letter that would change his life forever.” Vincent Massey, who had just retired from his official duties, was inviting him to participate in an architectural competition, along with Arthur Erickson, John C. Parkin and Carmen Corneil. The project was for a graduate student residence on the grounds of the University of Toronto. The memorandum accompanying the invitation stipulated that the building “should possess certain qualities: dignity, grace, beauty and warmth.” Thom, in charge of TBP’s proposal, won the competition and went on to build Massey College, “destined to be a kind of grand plot twist in the story of modern Canadian architecture,” according to Weder. Indeed, in the context of the early 60s, the carefully crafted, intimate interiors proposed by Thom were perceived by some of his contemporaries as contrary to the prevailing trend towards slick glass-and-steel modernism.

Weder describes the painstaking design process, which was totally under Thom’s control, as one that was professionally rewarding, but personally taxing. Adding to the complexity, Thom still lived in Vancouver and was juggling other commissions at TBP, all while going through unsettling divorce negotiations. Playwright, novelist, and inaugural Master of Massey College Robertson Davies described Thom in his personal diary as “a man of genius, without self-knowledge or self-protection, naked, bruised, and wandering.” 

Thom’s mounting personal hurdles were to be somewhat tempered when he finally moved to Toronto in 1963. He was deeply in love with Molly Golby, whom he had met a year before while working on Massey College. He would soon be married to her. Another positive turn of events was a chance encounter on the construction site of Massey College with Tom Symons, the founding president of Trent University—a post-secondary institution in its early planning stages in Peterborough, Ontario. This meeting eventually turned into a commission to lead the design of the new university’s masterplan and first buildings—a commission, writes Weder, that “marked a quantum leap in scale and complexity from anything Ron had attempted in his career. He knew how to design stand-alone houses and buildings, but he had no idea of how to go about master-planning a university campus from scratch.” 

Thom struggled with the difficult task at hand and relied on TBP’s expertise to back him up. He surrounded himself with a few talented, trusted colleagues, among them, architect Paul Merrick. Like Massey College, the design of Champlain College—the new university’s flagship building—became a kind of living laboratory for exploring new ideas. Fortunately, Thomas Symons turned out to be an indefectible champion and supporter of Thom’s creative vision. As Symons confided to Weder during an interview, “[Thom] would draw, and with just a few strokes of a pen, he would precisely conceptualize something I couldn’t even imagine. It was breathtaking.” 

The resulting building, mostly designed by Ron Thom, was highly praised for its aesthetics—but the budget ran much higher than expected, alarming Trent’s cost consultants. As pressure mounted on the architectural team, Weder writes, “Ron’s architects struggled to get their projects back on schedule while producing thousands of meticulously rendered hand-drawings and details.” 

Accustomed to digital tools, today’s young architects would probably be astonished at the amount of work needed to document a project or produce seductive perspective renderings. Unfortunately for Thom, even by the time Champlain College was underway, his more traditional work methods were starting to be displaced by digital drafting in the powerful corporate world, and among the most aggressive architectural firms. Weder sheds light on the anxiety the shift created among architects such as Thom, who still firmly believed in the value of intricate, time-consuming hand drawings. 

Nonetheless, by the time work was completed at Trent, Thom’s reputation had grown. So had his workload and his staff. He brought in new talent, including Peter Berton and Stephen Quigley, but “floundered at the overwhelming task of running the firm,” writes Weder. Towards the end of the book, the chapter ‘Art versus the Corporate Wave’ summarizes the challenges Thom had to face as he tried to respond to this new reality. She also explores his mounting dependency on alcohol, which was to eventually destroy his second marriage and many of his relationships. Weder handles this nexus of issues that led to Thom’s untimely death in 1986 with restraint and great delicacy.

A lot more could be said about this book, which reads like a novel: tragic at times, but exhilarating in so many ways. It is particularly thrilling for those of us who believe, as did Thom, that “The architect’s role as artist must none the less continue to be the most important raison d’être for his existence—and for the existence of his profession—as it has been throughout history.” 

Kudos to Weder who spent years on the research, interviews, and writing for this book. Thanks also are due to the architect’s family and his long-time colleagues and friends, who allowed Weder to access photographs and intimate documents that enrich this publication. In a country where architecture publishing can be an incredible ordeal, gratitude is also merited by Greystone Books, as they fully endorsed this publication. 

The author’s hope was that anyone interested in understanding, in John Fraser’s words, “the difference between a humdrum shelter and something akin to a miracle,” would enjoy reading Ron Thom, Architect: The Life of a Creative Modernist. I believe she has achieved her goal.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect. She studied at TUNS (now Dalhousie University’s School of Architecture), founded by Jack Shadbolt in 1961. Her first internship led her to work at TBP, where she became acquainted with a number of Ron Thom’s long-time colleagues. She later crossed paths with Ron Thom in Toronto, while she was at the helm of section a, the architectural journal she created in 1983. She published Ron Thom’s National Gallery competition entry in section a in August 1984.

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