Canada is a country of massive size, of diverse geographical features and an equally diverse population—all features that are magnificently reflected in its architecture. In Canada: Modern Architectures in History, Rhodri Windsor Liscombe and Michelangelo Sabatino offer a richly informative history of Canadian architecture that celebrates and explores the country’s many contributions to the spread of architectural modernity in the Americas.
Join us as the authors discuss how a distinct Canadian design attitude coalesced during the twentieth century, one informed by a liberal, hybrid, and pragmatic mindset intent less upon the dogma of architectural language and more on thinking about the formation of inclusive spaces and places. Taking a fresh perspective on design production, they map the unfolding of architectural modernity across the country, from the completion of the transcontinental railway in the late 1880s through to the present. Along the way they discuss architecture within the broader contexts of political, industrial, and sociocultural evolution; the urban-suburban expansion; and new building technologies. Examining the works of architects and firms such as ARCOP, Eric Arthur, Ernest Cormier, Brigitte Shim, and Howard Sutcliffe, this book brings Canadian architecture chronologically and thematically to life.
Rhodri Windsor Liscombe is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia. His books include The New Spirit: Modern Architecture in Vancouver, 1938–1963 (1998) and Architecture and the Canadian Fabric (2011). Michelangelo Sabatino is Professor and Director of the PhD Program in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is the author of Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2011) and co-editor of Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony (2017). Sabatino's most recent book Canada: Modern Architectures in History (2017) is co-authored with Rhodri Windsor Liscombe.