Canadian Modern Architecture

Canadian Modern Architecture: 1967 to the Present
Elsa Lam, Graham Livesey (Editors)
Canadian Architect/Princeton Architectural Press, November 2019



Hardcover | 6-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches | 544 pages | 300 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1616896454 | $55.00

Publisher's Description:

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, and 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 texts by contributing authors George Baird, Brian Carter, Ian Chodikoff, Odile Henault, George Kapelos, Lisa Landrum, Steven Mannell, Sherry McKay, Marco Polo, Colin Ripley, Lola Sheppard, David Theodore, Larry Wayne Richards, Adele Weder and Mason White.

dDAB Commentary:

Kenneth Frampton, who penned the Foreword to the impressive, indispensable Canadian Modern Architecture, included two architects (Shim+Sutcliffe and Patkau Architects) in his 2012 book Five North American Architects. Of any historian/critic from the United States, he understands the impressive quality of modern architecture north of the border. He even describes in the Foreword some obscure (to me) Canadian buildings that are not in the book because they predate the 1967 start date that editors Elsa Lam and Graham Livesey set for the book. That year, many architectural aficionados less well versed than Frampton will know, is when Montreal hosted the International and Universal Exposition, aka Expo 67, which included an influential, temporary structure by Frei Otto as well as lasting buildings designed by R. Buckminster Fuller and Moshe Safdie. The last, Safdie's Habitat 67, is a touchstone for both modern architecture in Canada and Canadian Modern Architecture.

The book features fifteen essays partitioned into four thematic sections: National Movements, International Influences, Regional Responses, and Centers of Influence. Each essay is heavily illustrated and hones in on an important aspect of the country's architectural production, from all those projects in 1967 and the buildings of First Nations to high-tech megastructures, Canada's own brand of Postmodernism, environmental architecture, and buildings in Canada's broad regions (west, east, prairie, the Arctic) and its major cities (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver). Both Lam and Livesey contribute essays, as do George Baird, Lola Sheppard and Mason White, and Larry Wayne Richards, among others. Any overlap between essays (and there's bound to be some given the sweep of the book's survey) is addressed by the editors through references that are helpful and give readers one way of navigating the book as an alternative to reading the essays in order. Published by Princeton Architectural Press with Canadian Architect, the book leaves out very little architecture of note built on Canadian soil in the last half-century, making it a must for anybody who wants to explore the country's architecture beyond Habitat and its other world-famous buildings.

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Author Bio:

Elsa Lam is editor of Canadian Architect magazine and is based in Toronto. She holds a doctorate in architectural history from Columbia University. Graham Livesey is a professor in the Master of Architecture Program (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape) at the University of Calgary.

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