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