Canadian Architecture: Evolving a Cultural Identity surveys the country's most accomplished architectural firms, whose work enhances cities and landscapes across Canada's geographically varied expanse. Author Leslie Jen explores a number of significant projects in urban and rural environments--private residences, cultural and institutional facilities, and democratic public spaces--that profoundly influence our interactions with each other and the communities in which we live. Accompanied by stunning photography, Canadian Architecture is a testament to a thriving, diverse and innovative design culture that continues to play an integral role in shaping our national identity.
Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) President's Medal Award (multi-media representation of architecture). Canada's most distinguished architectural critics and scholars offer fresh insights into the country's unique modern and contemporary architecture. Beginning with the nation's centennial and Expo 67 in Montreal, this fifty-year retrospective covers the defining of national institutions and movements: • How Canadian architects interpreted major external trends • Regional and indigenous architectural tendencies • The influence of architects in Canada's three largest cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver Co-published with Canadian Architect, this comprehensive reference book is extensively illustrated and includes fifteen specially commissioned essays.
Toronto has been hailed as “a city in the making” and “the city that works.” It’s an ongoing project: in recent years Canada’s largest city has experienced transformative, exciting change. But just what does contemporary Toronto look like? This authoritative architectural guide, newly updated and expanded, leads readers on 26 walking tours—revealing the evolution of the place from a quiet Georgian town to a dynamic global city. More than 1,000 designs are featured: from modest Victorian houses to shimmering downtown towers and cultural landmarks. Over 300 photographs, 29 maps, a description of architectural styles, a glossary of architectural terms, and indexes of architects and buildings pilot readers through Toronto’s diverse cityscape. New sections illustrate the swiftly changing face of Toronto’s waterfront and design highlights across the region. Originally written by architectural journalist Patricia McHugh and enhanced with new material and insights by Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic, this definitive guide offers a revealing exploration of Toronto’s past and future, for the city’s visitors and locals alike.
“A series of deceptively simple—and fun—exercises . . . A marvelous invitation to anyone with an interest in creativity, invention, and design.” —Michael Bierut, Partner, Pentagram, New York Even concert pianists do warm-up exercises to limber up the fingers and clear the mind for the performance ahead. Designers are, or should be, no different. This delightful collection provides fifty-two exercises or activities to jump-start your creative juices, free you from creative block, start a new project, or finish an existing one. Each exercise offers insight into the innumerable small decisions involved in design. How to join this part to that, how to establish a pattern or continue the series, how to say it without words, what fits, and what doesn’t? For established practicing designers or creatives in any field, these activities are sometimes playful, sometimes challenging—but always enlightening.
Architecture plays a powerful role in nation building. Buildings and monuments not only constitute the built fabric of society, they reflect the intersection of culture, politics, economics, and aesthetics in distinct social settings and distinct times. From first contact to the postmodern city, this anthology traces the interaction between culture and politics as reflected in Canadian architecture and the infrastructure of ordinary life. Whether focusing on the construction of Parliament or exploring the ideas of Marshall McLuhan and Arthur Erickson, these highly original essays move beyond considerations of authorship and style to address cultural politics and insights from race and gender studies and from postcolonial and spatial theory.
Midcentury spaces made new: A-Frame homes from rustic to ultra-modern, mountain retreats to seaside getaways. The A-Frame home surged in popularity in the 1950s, and has captured the public’s imagination with its playfully modern, steep-sloping roofline ever since. The Modern A-Frame celebrates seventeen diverse accounts of these minimalists cabins reinvented for the twenty-first century. Nostalgic escapes, heritage homes, full-time simplicity, and artists at work categorize the A-frames whose engaging stories are shared. Whether fabricated from a 1960s kit or as a new build via retro inspiration, the variety of styles and homeowners in this photo-driven collection beautifully captures the romance of a classic structure, which beckons to travelers and homebuyers today, just as it did sixty years ago. Perfect for the architectural enthusiast, midcentury-minded designer, or armchair traveler. Ben Rahn has been photographing architecture and interiors for more than twenty years. He founded A-Frame Studio in 2003 out of a desire to combine his love of design with his keen photographic eye. His work has been recognized internationally and has appeared in publications such as Dwell, Wallpaper, Conde Naste Traveller, and more. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
When Marjorie Hill graduated in 1920 as Canada's "first girl architect," she was entering a profession that had been established in Canada just 30 years earlier. For the Record, the first history of women architects in Canada, provides a fascinating introduction to early women architects, presented within the context of developments in both Europe and North America. Profiles of the women who graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto between 1920 and 1960 are illustrated with photographs of their work and include archival material that has never before been published. The final chapter on contemporary women in architecture showcases contributions by leading women architects across the country, from Halifax to Vancouver to Iqaluit. For the Record also provides current information on schools of architecture in Canada and includes a list of other resources to encourage young women who are thinking of pursuing careers in architecture.
Arthur Erickson, Canada's pre-eminent philosopher architect, was renowned internationally for his innovative approach to landscape, his genius for spatial composition, and his epic vision of architecture for people. Among his most celebrated large-scale works are three that helped to define Vancouver's urban landscape: Simon Fraser University, on Burnaby Mountain; the Robson Square complex at the heart of the city; and the exquisite Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Travel was key to Erickson's creative process; floating high above the clouds on extended airline flights, he made preliminary drawings on vellum with his fine-point black felt-tip pen, designing influential works not only for other parts of Canada-including Toronto's widely admired Roy Thomson Hall--but for sites in the U.S., Britain, and the Middle and Far East. Erickson worked chiefly in concrete, which he called "the marble of our times," and wherever they appear, his buildings move the spirit with their poetic freshness and their mission to inspire. But he was also a controversial figure, more than once attracting the ire of his fellow architects, and his professional achievements were tarnished by the excesses of a complicated personal life that resulted in a series of tawdry bankruptcies. In a fall from grace that recalls a Greek tragedy, Canada's great architect-a handsome, elegant man who lived like a millionaire and counted among his close friends Pierre Trudeau and Elizabeth Taylor-eventually became homeless and penniless. This first full biography of Erickson, who died in 2009 at the age of eighty-four, traces the architect's life from its modest origins to his emergence on the world stage. Author David Stouck, acclaimed for his earlier biographies of Ethel Wilson and Sinclair Ross, demonstrates here once again why his work has been praised as imaginative, incisive and compelling. Grounded in interviews with Erickson and his family, friends and clients, as well as the resources of extensive public archives, TITLE is both an intimate portrait of the man and a stirring account of how Erickson made his buildings work. Beautifully written and superbly researched, it is also a provocative look at the phenomenon of cultural heroes and the nature of what we call "genius."
"This book examines the history, impact, and influence of Toronto's 1958 City Hall and Square competition, which resulted in the building designed by Viljo Revell. The book discusses the impact of this competition on the design of public institutions and urban public spaces in Canada, and reflects on the value of architectural competitions as Modern architecture developed in the mid-20th century. While not a catalogue, the book is published to coincide with the exhibition Shaping Canadian Modernity: Toronto's 1958 New City Hall and Square Competition and its Legacy, curated by architect and Ryerson University associate professor George Thomas Kapelos and historian Christopher Armstrong, mounted at the Paul H. Cocker Gallery, Ryerson University from September 1 to October 9, 2015"--
