Best books for Canadian architects: 2024 Edition, Part 1
The past year saw an abundance of new books of interest to Canadian architects—many of them authored by Canadian designers. As the holidays approach, we’re rounding up this year’s best books.
You may also be interested in this round-up’s companion post, our 2024 Holiday Gift Guide.
Modern Architecture: The Basics by Graham Livesey ($19 CAD)
University of Calgary architecture professor Graham Livesey’s recently released survey examines technological, stylistic, socio-political, and cultural changes that have transformed the history of architecture since the late 18th century. Broad definitions of modernity and postmodernity introduce the book, which features 24 short thematic chapters looking at the concepts behind the development of modern and postmodern architecture. These include major historical movements, key figures, and evolving building typologies. The book also looks at the changing city during the 19th and 20th centuries, and examines how issues including gender, race, postcolonialism, and Indigeneity are informing contemporary architecture.
100 Rooms by RZLBD (Reza Aliabadi) ($35 CAD)
As a sequel to The Empty Room: Fragmented thoughts on Space (Actar, 2020), this book by Canadian architect Reza Aliabadi, founding principal of RZLBD, offers one hundred iterations of a square room, each of which tells a different story of the emptiness between the walls. Each spread in the book consists of a plan and a physical model of a room, conceived as an excavation of the geometry and order inherent within an identical square base. The rooms hold no design intention—no scale or function—but point to the infinite possibilities that emerge from a square. The book is also linked to the 100 series of short videos, which can be viewed on RZLBD’s YouTube channel.
Too Fun by Leala Hewak ($35 CAD)
This LP-sized book explores Raymond Moriyama’s brutalist masterpiece, the Ontario Science Centre, through 150 photographs of Hewak’s family outings to the playhouse in the months before its closure. The book features text excerpts from architect Raymond Moriyama’s typewritten design notes anticipating the creation of the Science Centre in 1969. “Where architecture ends and exhibits begin should be blurred,” wrote Moriyama. The images have a retro feel: after Leala was told she couldn’t photograph visitors (even with their permission), her partner, artist and actor Don Hewak, volunteered to feature prominently in the images. Don experimented with wearing a lab coat for the photos, then settled on a Mad Men-like suit to reference the 1960s era of the building. Leala had only started documenting the exterior of the building when it was abruptly closed on June 21, 2024, so the book also includes images of the site enclosed by blue fences, and of some of the many rallies protesting the shuttering of the beloved institution.
As It Is—A Precarious Moment in the Life of Ontario Place by Steven Evans ($50 CAD)
As It Is: A precarious moment in the life of Ontario Place takes readers on a journey through the landmark site, aiming to capture the essence of the iconic buildings by Eberhard Zeidler and waterfront park by Michael Hough, while painting a picture of Ontario Place’s uncertain future. The book’s 102 black-and-white photographs were taken by photographer Steven Evans between November 2021 and June 2023. The images are interwoven with texts by Evans, urban affairs journalist John Lorinc, and AGO curator of photography Maia-Mari Sutnik.
Read our review here.
Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre by WAF ($30 CAD)
Designed by Winnipeg’s Number Ten Architectural Group, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre is a Winnipeg cultural institution. Completed for Manitoba’s centennial, the award-winning Brutalist building houses Canada’s longest-running English regional theatre company. This book contains a foreword by Laurie Lam and essays by Alison Gillmor, Jeffrey Thorsteinson, and Susan Algie.
TC Cuadernos by Alison Brooks ($64 CAD)
This 386-page monograph charts eighteen built works by Canadian ex-pat Alison Brooks. The award-winning projects, completed in the past 20 years, range from single family homes to masterplans, largely in and around London, UK. The selection includes Brooks’s recently completed Cohen Quadrangle at Exeter College (the first Oxford College to be designed by a female architect), and Windward House in Gloucester, UK, which was selected as RIBA’s 2021 House of the Year. (Brooks is the only UK architect to have received all four of the RIBA’s most prestigious architectural awards: the Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal (twice), RIBA House of the Year, and the Stephen Lawrence Prize). The monograph provides a comprehensive documentation of the selected projects, including descriptive texts in Spanish and English, photographs, drawings and key construction details that illuminate each project’s tectonic and conceptual intent.
An Alliterative Lexicon of Architectural Memories by Alberto Pérez-Gómez ($28 CAD)
The culmination of a lifetime thinking and writing about architecture, McGill Professor Emeritus Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s two-volume lexicon offers new ways to engage with architecture and aims to enrich the reader’s experience of the built environment. Entries include traditional and modern architectural terminology, rendered with a display of philological origins, and enriched with first-person narratives interweaving architectural history and theory with Pérez-Gómez’s memories and musings on the nature of architectural making.
Bahá’í House of Worship by Joe Carter and Nooshfar Anna ($54 CAD)
This book tells the story of the architectural design and construction of the worldwide Bahá’í Temples, or Houses of Worship. The Bahá’í global community believes in the unity of all religions, and has constructed a continental House of Worship, open to all, on each continent. Two of these Temples were designed by Canadian architects: the Temple located in Delhi, India, by Fairborz Sabha, and the Temple in Santiago, Chile, by Hariri Pontarini Architects.
Iranian-Canadian Fairborz Sabha was asked to design the Bahá’í Temple in Delhi while still in his late twenties. Wishing to create a building that would resonate with the region’s rich cultural heritage, he modelled the building as an abstracted lotus flower, symbolizing spirituality and beauty. Following the building’s dedication in 1986, Canadian Architect Arthur Erickson remarked that the Temple was “one of the most remarkable achievements of our time, proving that the drive and vision of spirit can achieve miracles.”
Canadian architect Siamak Hariri led the design of the most recent of the Bahá’í Houses of Worship, perched on the foothills of the Andes in South America. Inspired by the universal experience of light, Hariri sought to create a glowing “temple of light,” which would be welcoming to people of all faiths.
Illustrated by over 500 images of completed temples, construction process photos, and architectural drawings, this book is a deep dive into the design thinking and construction of this remarkable global series of buildings.
Set Pieces by Diamond Schmitt Architects ($105 CAD)
Diamond Schmitt Architects’ new volume centres on the firm’s portfolio of performing arts buildings. Through case studies that spotlight 15 design elements, the book examines how design enhances and transforms the perception of performance. “Diamond Schmitt is proud to have designed more than 60 performing arts spaces around the world, and in surveying these projects for Set Pieces, we realized that we did not want to produce a conventional architectural monograph,” says founding principal Don Schmitt. “Rather than showcase these buildings as whole entities, we wanted to think about the fragments and design moments that make up these spaces and which contribute to a great place of performance. Through the innovative design ideas explored, from David Geffen Hall’s floating ‘fireflies’ to incorporating Texan vernacular into Buddy Holly Hall, we hope that readers will find new joy and appreciation in these details which reveal the transformative and emotional power of architecture.”
Rhythms of Change by Mitchell Cohen ($40 CAD)
Rhythms of Change is an accessible and entertaining account of the 20-year-long journey to revitalize Toronto’s Regent Park. The story is told by Mitchell Cohen, the CEO of The Daniels Corporation since 1984, and a leader in steering the organization as a socially conscious real estate developer. Cohen draws on his background as a songwriter and musician to structure the book: casting the journey’s phases as “sets” of tuning up, initial melodies, and eventually, a crescendo of social infrastructure and a fusion of melodies. The political battles and board room dramas that allowed the development to take its final shape are colourfully recounted, giving insight into the myriad consultations, partnerships, negotiations that were needed to bring the development to fruition—along with the overarching vision maintained through it all.
Casa Loma: Millionaires, Medievalism, and Modernity in Toronto’s Gilded Age by Matthew M. Reeve and Michael Windover ($50 CAD)
Casa Loma: Millionaires, Medievalism, and Modernity in Toronto’s Gilded Age is the first scholarly book dedicated to this Canadian landmark—the castle the sits on a ridge near downtown Toronto. Compiling nine essays by six authors from different backgrounds, Casa Loma situates the famous “house on the hill” within Toronto’s architectural, urban, and cultural history.
The Story of Upfront Carbon How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis by Lloyd Alter
Canadian architect-turned-developer-turned-writer Lloyd Alter is the author of a must-read substack on sustainability and the built environment. His recent book, The Story of Upfront Carbon, begins with a comprehensive look on the importance of embodied carbon—or in his term, upfront carbon—in the carbon footprint of everything from buildings to shoes. Designs that minimize upfront carbon are key to reducing impact, but ultimately what is needed, in Alter’s compelling argument, is a global turn towards sufficiency—essentially, using less stuff. “Unlike operating carbon emissions, where efficiency rules, dealing with upfront carbon emissions is all about sufficiency, about using less of everything, because everything has a footprint,” writes Alter. But rather than implying a turn towards rationing and sacrifice, writes Alter, this is about societal changes: living in right-sized, well-built homes; adopting the Italian model of walking to a neighbourhood coffee bar for a quick espresso in a ceramic cup, rather than idling in a drive-in line for a disposable cup. A society that embraces sufficiency, writes Alter, “is a positive picture of healthy, resilient living where everyone has enough of what they need.”
Design Trails—Adventures of a Structural Engineer by Paul Alexander Fast (Orders upon Request)
The book crams in a vast array of Paul’s wonderful creativity in timber engineering. The global move among structural engineers and architects to timber for all the right reasons is accelerating, and Paul is far ahead in this game. At its heart, this book is really about celebrating living wood and structural timber in equal measure. If you are looking for inspiration about how to use timber in your designs, then this book is for you. Interspersed with this inspiration is a set of stories about Paul’s family’s interactions with the life of the timber when it was living wood. This adds to the brilliant use of timber—we all love a good story, after all.
Among the exquisite photographs of extraordinary structures, the imagery includes many simple, but illuminating, sketches and photographs depicting key underpinning structural principles to demonstrate what lies at the heart of the final complex-looking outcome. These explanations are gold dust for the reader, explained so beautifully.
Read our review here.
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