Architecture and the Canadian Fabric

Broad in scope and filled with both insight and intriguing fact…this collection serves to entice a more sustained consideration of the relation between the messy realities of social practice and the production of this thing called architecture. Christopher Macdonald, University of British Columbia, BC Studies, No.176, Winter 2012-13

The essays greatly advance the field of architectural history in Canada. Given the breadth on display, Canadian architects and historians surely will find items of interest and pertinence to their practice. David Monteyne, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Canadian Architect, April 2013

According to the editor’s conclusion, this study should ‘reinforce attention to Canadian architectural patrimony and demonstrate its significance for the international discourse and practice of design’. This work does succeed in doing so and also adds significantly to the body of literature on Canadian architecture. It is well researched and thoroughly documented. The analytical principles guiding the publication could be applied to other works, including further studies by this group of authors, covering more aspects of the architectural heritage of Canada. Barbara Opar, Architecture Librarian, Syracuse University Library, Art Libraries Society of North America

The sum of the parts in this volume is much greater than the whole and makes our understanding of Canadian architecture, and indeed more general questions of methodology and interpretation in the discipline of architectural history, manifestly clear and intellectually absorbing. This is a significant contribution to an important field of study that deserves our utmost attention. Dana Arnold, Professor of Architectural History, University of Southampton

The finely interwoven essays that make up Architecture and the Canadian Fabric cover the country from coast to coast to coast, from early European contact to the present, and from the wide-ranging perspective of seventeen international contributors. Yet the introduction, conclusion, and prefaces to the individual parts provide readers a compass to navigate material as rich and varied as the long-overlooked built environment of Canada herself. Canadian architectural history has come of age. Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, Queen's University

A major collective work, this rich and multi-faceted constellation of recent scholarship makes an important contribution to knowledge in a variety of fields, focusing on, but not limited to, the colonial and modern architectural histories of Canada. Peter Scriver, Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA), School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, University of Adelaide

Defining Canadian architecture involves elaborating not just a narrative of various buildings, styles, and architects, but also a narrative of how history is viewed and constructed. This valuable work covers a wide spectrum from the French missionaries to bungalows to Arthur Erickson and illuminates the changing discourse on the nature of identity. The book is essential not just for Canadian design but puts into a wider context the changing nature of historical discourse in the early twenty-first century. Richard Guy Wilson, Architectural Historian, University of Virginia