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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Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman her Own Architect
By Kelly Hayes McAlonie (State University of New York Press, 2023)

Architect, mother, cyclist, partner: Buffalo architect Louise Bethune was all of these and more. And although she was the first professional woman architect in the United States, her story has remained largely untold.

In a notable new book—one of two biographies of Bethune to appear in the past decade—architect and Canadian ex-pat Kelly Hayes McAlonie offers a comprehensive and compelling account of Bethune’s life and career. What may at first glance seem like a minor story in a minor place is, in fact, an inspiring history of everyday professional determination and ethics, situated in a region that was a centre of innovation and wealth at the time.

The thoughtfully researched narrative offers an extensive look into Bethune’s career, including the founding of her office in 1881, where she was later joined by her husband, Robert Bethune, and then by architect William Fuchs. Together, the “partnership of equals” designed numerous residential, commercial, and public buildings, especially schools. In 1888, Bethune was the first woman elected to the American Institute of Architects, and in 1889, she became the AIA’s first female fellow. 

Louise’s crowning achievement was as lead designer and construction supervisor of the 1904 Hotel Lafayette in Downtown Buffalo, the largest luxury hotel of its decade. (The building was renovated and its public areas were restored to their gilded glory in 2012.) The hotel is one of the office’s 179 built and unbuilt works, many still standing, but even more demolished, which are documented in an appendix of the book. I wish that there had been a map associated with the list to allow readers to visually locate (and potentially visit) the remaining buildings.

Though privileged in many respects on account of her race and social mobility, Louise also faced misogyny and discrimination, and was radically pragmatic by necessity. While a pioneer, she was not a feminist advocate and did not officially participate in the suffragist movement. She was, however, according to Hayes McAlonie, “engaged in women’s equality on her own terms.” We learn unequivocally that Bethune was a staunch believer in a women’s right to equal pay for equal work. It was this principled attitude that prevented her from competing for the design of the Women’s Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. Bethune was well positioned to win the competition, but refused to enter, since the award was only one tenth what male designers earned for the other pavilions.

Bethune was also a cycling enthusiast: she was the first woman in Buffalo to own a bicycle, and a cofounder of the Women’s Wheel and Athletic Club. It is as a “wheeler” that readers may connect to Bethune most viscerally, imagining the physical constraints of the 19th-century garments worn—and eventually shed, along with the social roles they implied—when mounting a bicycle and claiming the freedoms it afforded.

Author Kelly Hayes McAlonie shares a relationship across time with Bethune: though originally Canadian, Kelly is now based in Western New York, and was the next woman in Buffalo, after Bethune, to successfully become a fellow with the AIA. In the author’s words, “the parallels gave me a unique insight into her life and career, and it certainly enhanced my passion in researching and telling her story.” Through this book, Hayes McAlonie continues her advocacy for women in the architectural profession—an earlier accomplishment was working with Despina Stratigakos to convince Mattel to bring Architect Barbie to market.

As a humanistic biography, Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman Her Own Architect presents Louise as a pioneering professional, but also in her multiple roles as a mother, a spouse, a property owner, and a person with hobbies (wheeling, history and genealogy). In this sense, the book is an intimate and timely portrait that speaks to the continuing need for architects—of all genders—to espouse a moral compass, to pursue work-life balance, and to provide a professional standard of care—all pressing topics for the practice of architecture today.

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The Suicide Magnet: Inside the Battle to Erect a Safety Barrier on Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct
By Paul McLaughlin (Dundurn Press, 2023)

In 2003, the Luminous Veil—a suicide barrier designed by Dereck Revington Studio along Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct—opened. Revington’s full vision did not come to completion until a full 12 years later, when the steel strings were finally illuminated with a ribbon of 35,000 LEDs. As it turns out, the journey to erect the barrier in the first place was also long and hard-fought.

The push for erecting a permanent safety barrier for the Bloor Viaduct started with a series of widely reported suicides in the mid-1990s, which brought light to the fact that the bridge had the second-highest rate of suicides in North America, after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. MacLaughlin recounts the stories of several of the 400 people who died of suicide from this spot, the trauma and mental illness that led to their deaths, and their choice of the Viaduct as their jumping place. As the families of the deceased, medical specialists, and advocates learned about how a suicide barrier might prevent future deaths, their efforts became concentrated around two men: retired salesman Al Birney and journalism student Michael McCamus. Together, Birney and McCamus spent close to five years lobbying Toronto’s City Hall to create a safety barrier on the bridge.

After laborious discussions and meetings led by the two men, City Council greenlit a design competition for the barrier. The competition was ultimately won by Revington, working with two students at the time, Geoffrey Thün and Jonathan Tyrrell. The project overcame a crucial challenge with the help of architect Ellis Kirkland, who led a private fundraising campaign when bidding came in $4 million above the original budget. (The initiative ultimately faltered, and the City absorbed the extra costs for the barrier’s construction.) Funding for the illumination of the Veil materialized a decade later, with the impetus of Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games.

McLaughlin’s chronicle is a detailed telling not only of a suicide barrier, but of Toronto’s complex politics, and the people who battled through its challenges to get the Luminous Veil built and illuminated. It is, as well, a plea to recognize the struggles associated with mental illness, including among friends and family, and for design and architecture’s role in creating compassionate cities where all may live and thrive.

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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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Modest Hopes
By Don Loucks and Leslie Valpy (Dundurn Press, 2021)

Modest Hopes is a deep dive into the experiences of Toronto’s immigrants during the 1820s to 1920s, as told through the homes they once lived in. Don Loucks and Leslie Valpy invite readers to acknowledge the historic significance of these workers’ cottages, whose presence is becoming increasingly rare amidst a rapidly densifying cityscape.

The first chapters of the book highlight the historical arrival of British, Irish, Eastern European, Chinese, and African American immigrants—groups that shared the common goal of breaking loose from declining prospects in their home countries to seek a better life in Toronto. Among the city’s numerous tenements and shacktowns, five worker cottage typologies emerged to serve such immigrants: all small, but efficiently planned. Through hope and hard work, immigrants strived to live in—or even own—such a cottage, which was considered a coveted luxury. The five typologies would eventually become commonplace across the city’s industrial landscape. The residents and their homes ultimately contributed to the multiculturalism and mix of distinct neighbourhoods that remains a hallmark of Toronto’s urban identity to this day.

The latter half of the book documents the life stories of eight residents who lived in workers’ cottages during the nineteenth century. Many of the hundred-year-old buildings they lived in still stand today. Using detailed sketches, historic maps and both current and archival photographs, the authors examine the homes’ significant role in shaping the joys and the challenges faced by the immigrants who resided in them.

The book comes at a time when housing and heritage preservation are topical—and often competing—issues facing Toronto’s designers, politicians, and residents, many of whom come from an immigrant background. Modest Hopes inspires readers to celebrate these overlooked buildings, their past residents, and their roles in shaping the foundations of the city around them, while encouraging us to question to what extent these modest buildings should be a part of the city’s future.

-Review by Jason Brijraj

The Rise of Awards in Architecture
Edited by Jean-Pierre Chupin, Carmela Cuccuzzella, and George Adamczyk (Vernon Press, 2022)

Historically, architectural awards were a rarity. But now, they have become part of the currency of contemporary practice in Canada. The Rise of Awards in Architecture documents and interrogates the exponential rise in the number of awards given to architectural projects, and in the number of organizations involved in the giving of awards. “We have gone from fewer than 20 organizations in the early 1980s to more than 100 large organizations celebrating architecture annually,” write the book’s editors. In Canada alone, they document 78 organizations delivering awards in all fields of the built environment in 2020—and between them recognizing some 1,664 projects.

The book’s 10 essays tackle various questions associated with the rise of awards, from Dana Butrock’s appraisal of the Pritzker Prize and Marco Polo’s documentation of the changing formats of the Prix de Rome, to essays by Carmela Cuccuzzella and Sherif Goubran on the emergence of awards focused on the environmental performance of buildings. Jean-Pierre Chupin examines how awards define architectural quality in different ways: some taking a synthetic view that relies on architectural judgement, others relying on quantification through metrics, and still others looking at the social and ethical dimensions of projects.

Drilling down into other subcategories of awards, Aurélien Catros and Adélie De Marre look at the way heritage awards confer a new type of conservation status, Alexandra Paré asks how school architecture should be recognized in awards, and Lucie Palombi examines the literary ambitions of the winners of architecture book awards. Rounding out the volume, Typhaine Moogan takes a long view of architectural awards through a sociological lens, while Georges Adamczyk considers the pedagogical status acquired by award-winning buildings.

As any book of academic essays, the volume is shaped by the research of individual authors, rather than by a single comprehensive viewpoint. Nonetheless, it has much to offer in bringing a critical set of lenses to the phenomenon of architectural awards in Canada.

-Review by Elsa Lam

An Architect’s Address Book
By Robert Lemon (ORO Editions, 2022)

Robert Lemon’s An Architects Address Book is a good insight into the making of an architect. Subtitled “the places that shaped a career,” the book provides, in memoir format, careful descriptions of the places and the people Lemon has met who have had a lasting impact on his life and career. From childhood memories of St. Thomas, to his extensive visits to England and continental Europe, as well as more exotic places like Xi’an or Dealy Island in the Canadian Arctic, each illustrates how experiences are formative for an architect. While Robert has retired to Stratford, Ontario, the strongest parts of this memoir are his stories about Vancouver, where he lived for many years, and worked both in private and public practice, conserving the heritage of the city. 

-Review by Michael McClelland

See all articles in the November issue 

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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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Observation is a Constant that Underlies All Approaches 

By Phyllis Lambert (Lars Müller Publishers, 2023) 

REVIEW Elsa Lam 

Architect and philanthropist Phyllis Lambert has long been a collector and commissioner of photographs. Photographs undertaken with Richard Pare were a key tool in mapping out Montreal’s greystone neighbourhoods, which Lambert became instrumental in preserving. In 1974, long before architectural photography became a popular specialty, she purchased the first photograph for a collection and an institution she had not yet created—the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

In the background of this work, Lambert has continuously honed her own photography, which is presented for the first time in this book. In the fifties, she documented the Seagram Building and Plaza, for which she served as director of planning. In the mid-sixties, she photographed ancient theatres while designing the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal. Upon returning to Montreal in the early 70s, she created cinematographic slide shows (complete with recorded soundtracks) of threatened buildings for the preservation organization Save Montreal. 

Her photography continued in later travel and on architectural study tours around the world: alternating between black-and-white and colour, analogue and digital. She even reached for a Hasselblad or a Polaroid when the subject called for it, but since 1993, has stuck mainly to pocket-sized cameras: first a point-and-shoot Olympus, then a Canon PowerShot, and lately, a succession of iPhones. 

During the pandemic, like many of us, Lambert observed daily life repeatedly at close range. She took advantage of the time to photograph, over and over, the views from her windows, and vistas through the rooms and doorways of her home in Old Montreal. Why has this interest in photography persisted over the decades? “Surely,” she writes, “observation is the constant that underlies all approaches, all levels of interest, and all fascination with the medium.” She adds, “Observation grows with what it feeds on, driven by focused inquiries that deepen exponentially over time.”

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Architect Moshe Safdie listens to Yo-Yo Ma play the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major on an open deck by the sea, seated alongside King Hussein and Queen Noor. He attends dinner parties for the Clintons at Yitzhak Rabin’s home. Alice Walton, the Walmart heiress, sends her private plane to fetch him for a meeting. He calls art historian Oleg Grabar when he needs to design a mosque. These are just a few of the celebrity-studded scenes that shape Safdie’s new autobiography, If Walls Could Speak, a look back at the well-known architect’s prolific life.

The story goes beyond his famous friends. We learn of Safdie’s parents, childhood, his two marriages and four children, his recent home renovations, his penchant for white collarless shirts, and even of the raccoon who lives outside his office window—all alongside his lifelong dreams, sporadic disappointments, and ongoing aspirations. Little sketches and photos, sometimes in the margins, give the book the feeling of an intimate photo album. It’s a very human story.

For all these reasons plus two more, If Walls Could Speak is a great pleasure to read. First, I have worked at the McGill University School of Architecture since 1990 and Safdie is arguably our school’s most famous living graduate. He recently made headlines by donating his archives and Habitat ’67 condo to McGill. So I thought I sort of knew his story. But the book answers many of the questions that I simply had never considered: why exactly did he leave Montreal? How does he look back on Habitat ’67 after all these years? Where does he most feel at home? 

Second, If Walls Could Speak gives real insight into a worldwide architectural practice since the 1960s. Twice in the book he offers a glimpse of his daily life—a mix of exhausting global travel, leading four or five design teams at once, and spending time with his beloved wife, the photographer Michal Ronnen. “Our lives and our work,” he divulges in the Prologue, “are totally intertwined.” Especially good for students is Chapter 9, Megascale, where he explains the ways that big architectural projects typically evolve, starting from a sketch (sometimes done on an airplane) through concept stage and design development. 

The megaproject in Megascale is Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, commissioned in 2005. It is a massive, mixed-use development with three towers, linked by a sky park, which Safdie says, somewhat implausibly to this reader, harkens back to Habitat ’67. Even more strange, though, is his suggestion that the shopping spine was inspired by the cardo maximus of ancient Roman cities. It’s not an obvious association—Marina Bay Sands was a filmset for Crazy Rich Asians, not Spartacus—but it is a window into how this guy thinks big. The story of Marina Bay Sands actually reads like a Hollywood screenplay, complete with men’s room deals, angry emails, gilded airplane interiors, a contentious lawsuit that accused Safdie of replicating the SkyPark design in a subsequent project, and—spoiler alert—an eventual reconciliation.

Such snapshots of the joys and risks of contemporary practice—and an urge to explain projects in one’s own words—overlap nicely with other autobiographies recently written by famous architects born in the interwar period. I think of Safdie’s friend (the families met up regularly in Mexico) Richard Rogers, who wrote A Place for All People: Life, Architecture and the Fair Society in 2017. Canadian examples of this genre would include Eb Zeidler’s two-volume Buildings Cities Life: An Autobiography in Architecture, which came out in 2013, and Jack Diamond’s Context and Content: The Memoir of a Fortunate Architect, published last year. In these books, and Safdie’s, you get a real sense that the authors want to give something back for all their successes.

A memoir is also an opportunity to say what one thinks might define good architecture. Safdie believes deeply in what he calls “the power of place.” He devotes an entire chapter to this idea about how to unlock the secrets of a site, citing examples including Machu Picchu and medieval Italian hill towns. He insists that good buildings have a magical quality, beyond simply satisfying the program. “We need to insist on magic,” he reminds readers, alongside numerous references to the transformative power of music. His favourite buildings include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, and Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

Safdie still loves to sketch, and the model shop in his office seems to be the octogenarian’s most magical place. “Architects who forgo the painstaking supervision and review of shop drawings never get the building they think they’re getting,” he warns. 

How does Canada figure in Safdie’s story? We are big. In 1953, Safdie’s family emigrated from Haifa, where he was born, to Montreal. He studied architecture at McGill University, where his thesis became Habitat ’67, the iconic housing project whose impact ripples throughout the decades and the book. Additionally, many Montrealers appear in the narrative as significant allies. Stuart Wilson and Sandy van Ginkel stand out as teachers. From Wilson, Safdie learned “the idea that architecture needs to be built, not just drawn.” Dutch-born van Ginkel was Safdie’s first employer and a huge influence. “To know Sandy van Ginkel was to become more sophisticated,” remembers Safdie. A letter from Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Sandy’s partner, introduced the 22-year-old to Louis Kahn, who would soon after employ him. 

The Canadian architecture scene is simultaneously something of an enigma in Safie’s memoir. “Ever since Habitat ’67, Canada had for some reason been tough to crack. To this day, I can’t quite explain why this should have been so,” he writes. Even so, Safdie designed landmark Canadian buildings such as the National Gallery of Canada and Vancouver’s Library Square. He blames the rise of Quebec nationalism and his own criticism of postmodernism for a hiatus of Canadian projects just after Expo. A handy list of Safdie’s projects appears at the end of the book, listing the names, dates, and locations of 53 projects he considers significant since 1967: nine are in Canada.

When I teach students about Safdie in undergraduate architectural history courses, I often use the analogy of a chameleon. Holding Canadian, American, and Israeli passports, and with homes and work around the world, he seems to fit everywhere. What the book reveals, however, is that he has often felt out of sync. He resigned an endowed chair at Harvard’s GSD, for example, because he felt isolated from other faculty members. The multiple references to not getting jobs in Quebec and Canada, too, suggest that Safdie’s extraordinary mobility may have come at some professional cost.

Safdie clearly sees himself not as a chameleon, but as a mediator. He views architecture as a way to bridge differences. Like me, however, some Canadian readers may be slightly annoyed by the ways in which If Walls Could Speak is so clearly pitched at American readers. Safdie calls Douglas Cardinal, for example, a native Canadian (rather than Indigenous) architect, and there are other more subtle but equally jarring Americanisms throughout the book. Another minor disappointment is that one of my favourite Safdie moments gets no mention whatsoever. In 2007, he made headlines by walking away from the billion-dollar McGill University Health Centre project because it was slated to be built as a P3. That is chutzpah that deserves loud applause.

Speaking of health care, If Walls Could Speak might even be counted among the silver linings of Covid-19. It took a global pandemic to slow down Safdie’s schedule enough to focus on this long-running memoir.  For that, we can be grateful.

Annmarie Adams is Professor and former Director of the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University.

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Architecture + Itinérance: Pratiques inclusives pour une ville solidaire

By Sarahlou Wagner-Lapierre, Élizabeth Prince, Véronic Lapalme, and Sonia Blank; edited by Carolyne Grimard and Élène Levasseur (Architecture sans frontières Québec, 2023)

REVIEW Elsa Lam

How can architecture help the unhoused? Working with Architects without Borders’ Quebec chapter, a group of researchers have set out to document examples of best practices, collating them into a catalogue of techniques intended for designers, organizations, and policy-makers working with people experiencing homelessness.

The well-being of the unhoused is at the heart of the strategies presented, which address a range of spaces used by this client group, from warming shelters to social housing. The focus of the publication is on positive examples of places that both enhance cities and provide valuable essential services for the unhoused. 

Bridgman Collaborative’s Pop-Up Washroom in Winnipeg, and Sustainable | Architecture for a Healthy Planet’s Friends of Ruby Home in Toronto are among a half dozen Canadian examples, pointing to the need for amenities in public spaces and the value of collaborative design processes, respectively. 

The majority of the examples are projects from the United States and Europe. These include La Ferme du Rail by Grand Huit Architects, a mixed-use project in Paris that includes housing for vulnerable people, a restaurant, and a student residence adjacent to a railway station. Shelter from the Storm, by Holland Harvey Architects, is a London, UK project that adaptively reuses a grocery store as a shelter and exemplifies how such an environment can be warm, welcoming, and secure.

As it concludes, the book offers several avenues for further research. Can prefabrication and modular design aid in reducing the costs of building for the unhoused? How can we better understand the needs of groups such as Indigenous and LGBTQIA2S+ communities, who are overrepresented amongst Montreal’s unhoused? Can zoning bylaws be made more inclusive for people experiencing homelessness? The present publication offers a solid foundation for continuing to explore these questions.

www.asf-quebec.org

An English translation of this publication is in progress.

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Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds

By Luke Casper Pearson and Sandra Youkhana (Thames and Hudson, 2022)

REVIEW Ksenia Eic

Video games have historically been seen as mindless entertainment. But for those of us who grew up playing video games and continue to be inspired by these rich, virtual environments, we know that they offer much more. This is why I was pleased to see the appearance of Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds, a book that aims to showcase the artistic and design merits of video games.

Authors Luke Casper Pearson, an associate professor at Bartlett School of Architecture in London, and Sandra Youkhana, a registered architect and lecturer at Bartlett School of Architecture bring their professional training to bear by focusing on the spatial design of video games, highlighting some of the many layers of design thinking that go into game development. Opening the book and seeing the beautiful diagrams—all in a decidedly architectural style, using only linework and hatches—made me thrilled to start reading it. I was even more excited when I saw the game selections, which included Dark Souls, a masterwork of spatial design.

But this excitement died down as I made my way through the book. Though there were many interesting design ideas covered in the various chapters, three questions kept going through my head. Why did the authors come to choose these specific analyses, many of which described aspects of the games that were obvious to players or had little to offer in regards to meaningful design insight? How did the work intend to inform architectural or even game design? And ultimately, who is this book for?

Each of the book’s 12 chapters centres on a single video game There is a nice variety selected, from Fornite—an online, multiplayer, battle royal—to Dwarf Fortress, a roguelike 2D simulation. The writers illustrate design concepts in each chapter, ranging from how players move across a map/level and how real-world and in-game buildings and locations match up, to understanding the scale of in-game locations and interactions between players. While these generally were clear, some of the choices were odd. For example, anyone who has played Assassin’s Creed knows that one of the key mechanics in the series is the ability to climb on and jump between buildings. Some of the diagrams describing this—such as the elevation views showing climbable sections of various buildings—are quite beautiful and interesting, but by the fifth-plus diagram, the point was already clearly made. Conversely, I felt that other topics touched on briefly deserved far greater study, such as the layouts of various areas in Dark Souls, and how the spatial design of each affects gameplay, player movement and experience.

I would also have liked to see what game developers could add to the book based on their internal research. Many developers spend a colossal amount of time play-testing their games, a phase in which they gather data on how players move around the map(s), how players choose to play (for example, what attacks or weapons they use most), what locations/events are most popular, how much time it takes to complete a level, etc. For some studios, there are sophisticated methods for recording and reviewing this data. Gaining insight into the entire process from pre-release research to post-release analysis could provide an intriguing analogue to the pre- and post-occupancy studies for real-life buildings.

One further critique is the treatment of text in this book—generally in large blocks with no subheadings, which made reading through it feel like a chore, even for me—an architect fascinated with game design who has played many of these games. Finding a way to break up the text and move secondary information to the side would have helped immensely. Images, for their part, while beautiful and presented with a coherent aesthetic, lacked the labels and legends that would have made them more comprehensible.

Who is this book for, then? Those who are interested in the intersection of architecture and video games may find they are already aware of many of the insights illustrated in this book, but, even with its faults, I would say it is worth a read. For readers new to video games, the book perhaps relies too much on familiarity with the games that form the basis of the case studies. I would love to see books of this type written in a more accessible way for both gamers and non-gamers alike, so that people can learn about and appreciate the complexities of video games design and what insights this may offer to architecture and other design fields. All in all, I would give a tentative recommendation for Videogame Atlas to all those interested in architectural and video game design. Though it may not be perfect, it is one of the precious few publications focusing on the intersection between these two fields of design. This book builds credibility for video game design and helps lay the groundwork for future study—for that, I am grateful to both authors and hope that they continue to study these topics further.

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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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