ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

“ONLY HALF AN ” Nature, Nation, and Interpretations of in Canada

JEFFREY THORSTEINSON is an architectural > JEFFREY THORSTEINSON historian with the Architecture Foundation and a design writer at Republic Architecture Inc. A graduate of the and Queen’s University, he is the author of in Winnipeg (Winnipeg ew texts have examined modern Architecture Foundation, 2012). His research FCanadian architecture in a national focuses on interpretations of modern architecture frame. This has limited the analysis of major themes in this discourse, particu- in Canada and the program larly with respect to international prac- at the University of Manitoba. He is currently tice and cultural history. Yet definitions working on an exhibition and book on the history of a coherent and specific “Canadian” of Green Blankstein Russell . category of modern architecture have been articulated. Such suggestions have appeared either tacitly or directly in popular texts, magazine articles, exhibition catalogues, and in writing by architects themselves. These construc- tions of a national approach chiefly define this category in contrast to others and as emblematized by a link to land- scape, paralleling entrenched myths of national character.

The terms with which we discuss our lived environment, its meaning and history, reveal important underlying assumptions. Within the discourse of modern architecture in Canada, these terms have commonly pertained to issues of landscape. This focus on geograph- ical context is notable when considered against a prevailing definition of archi- tectural modernism based on universal, functionalist, and formal criteria. This variety of interpretation has an opera- tive character, fulfilling a nationalist function in line with certain notions of Canadian identity. A concern with land- scape was, in fact, an important strain in architectural modernism as a whole. A nationalist identification of Canadian modern architecture with landscape misreads this situation. This misread- ing, however, results from a similarity in motive and solution between strands of modernism and Canadian nationalism: FIG. 1. HART MASSEY HOUSE, , ON, 1960, BY HART MASSEY. | COURTESY OF HELLMUT SCHADE/CARLETON UNIVERSITY AUDIO-VISUAL RESOURCE CENTRE.

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 > 51-64 51 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

a perceived lack in the structures of mod- modernism,” has been posited as more Architecture, edited by Andrew Gruft; ernity and a reliance on land, nature, and authentically representative of national while addressing a range of practices, place as remedy. character in its relationship to place. The this text seeks to reintroduce the nation architects foregrounded in these interpre- as analytic frame and identifies an “CANADIAN” MODERN tations and other similar texts comprise emphasis on context as a key aspect of ARCHITECTURE many of the country’s most celebrated: Ron Canadian practice.8 Thom, , , How has the quality of being Canadian Clifford Weins, and Étienne Gaboury. For We should be cautious toward any inter- been framed in writing on modern archi- the most part, works placed in this cate- pretation that attempts a totalizing view tecture? An emphasis on a connection gory date to the 1960s and 1970s. Bodies on a nation’s approach to any practice. to landscape is evident in even a brief of work which have been framed as parts As put by Annmarie Adams and Martin survey of texts examining this subject. of this category include the regionalist Bressani, architectural history is “a domain In 1983 West Coast Style and Prairie Expressionism. well suited to serve nationalist claims.”9 declared that modern Canadian works Characteristics read as signifiers of a res- Mark Crinson similarly argues that if demonstrate that “architecture is more ponse to landscape include sensitive siting, nationalism engenders nations, “then than the provision of shelter: it is a res- mimesis of nature, tactile materials, sculp- nations aspire to be nation states, these ponse, even to the point of subservience, tural rooflines, and echoes of historical then require nation-signifying buildings, to the land, climate, and nature.”1 In 1994 or vernacular approaches. Most buildings which in turn manifest the nation.” While Peter Buchanan, echoing the language placed in this category are domestic, aca- this might inform architectural practice, of British architects Peter and Alison demic, and religious structures in suburban a want for “nation-signifying buildings” Smithson, described a “Heroic period” or rural settings. (In the literature I have might also skew historical analysis.10 of Canadian architecture, centred in the surveyed, this nationalist line of interpre- late 1960s and early 1970s, typified by tation appears more evident in English Indeed, like Boddy, others have found bold “gestures set in relation to majes- Canadian writing on architecture, although fault in the characterization of archi- tic landscapes”—works that projected a prominent French Canadian architects have tecture as “Canadian.” James Viloria, “powerful transcendent myth of Canada characterized their practice in analogous for instance, argues that the study of unified by the grandeur of the land to regionalist and landscape-oriented terms early twentieth-century architecture in which human settlement could at least and have been read by others as part of Canada “has traditionally been under- be an adequate partner.”2 John McMinn, this Canadian category. A fuller analysis pinned by a nationalist model that has in an exploration of postwar themes in of the similarity, or lack thereof, between related the built environment to notions Canadian practice and their resonance English and French Canadian discourses on of collective, universal and human in the present, describes a “distinct” architecture and nation, its relationship and identity.”11 Christopher Thomas offers Canadian modernist architecture cate- meaning remains to be done.)5 a similar view in his article “Canadian gory “clearly focused on phenomenolo- Castles,” which focuses on the reading gical preoccupations” and demonstrating As implied by McMinn and Rochon, this of the Chateau and neo-Gothic styles a “materialist engagement with the spe- category has been formulated to include as Canadian. This process was linked to cifics of place.”3 Lisa Rochon’s 2005 book more recent works hailed as heir to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth- Up North likewise argues that modern modern Canadian practices.6 This notion century effort to establish a Canadian and contemporary Canadian architecture is also implied in Trevor Boddy’s argu- architectural mode, but the apex of such is “in profound alliance with landscape” ment that the contemporary Canadian readings were the years 1945 to 1980, and that “what makes Canadian architec- architectural community celebrates an a period of Canadian expansion and ture unique” is its fight to maintain “a overly narrow slice of work: “tiny [artful] patriotism that dovetails with the buil- powerful sense of place.”4 wooden pavilions” in nature, adopting a ding of Canadian modern architecture.12 self-consciously neo-modern “conserva- Thomas argues such characterizations Intentionally or not, such writing has insi- tive, romantic and spiritual” approach.7 engaged in “slides and slippages” that nuated the existence of a “Canadian” cate- This variety of interpretations is mani- concealed the complexity of practice in a gory of modern architecture. This subset of fest in the 2005 catalogue Substance manner conditioned by nationalism. Yet practice, which we might term a “contextual Over Spectacle: Contemporary Canadian he also explores why these styles were

52 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

received as Canadian. Initiating the same of labelling the first as “characteristically Canadian practices and modern architec- process for modern architecture deemed Canadian.” In both cases a Miesian steel ture writ large. This process also relates “Canadian” may allow a fuller unders- and glass structure allows for topogra- to deeper “slippages.” Among these is a tanding of the complexity of practice phical “acceptance.” A similar reading is tacit acceptance of a unitary definition of and the meaning of national framing found in a 1962 speech on Canadian archi- modern architecture as necessarily univer- with respect to modernism, modernity, tecture by John C. Parkin, who argued that salizing, functionalist, and manifested in and nationalism writ large. the Canadian use of the colour white is a constrained set of formal criteria read as related to context. Parkin states: “In win- evoking these meanings. Concurrent is an To begin, we can ask: to what degree is ter, when the snow arrives, only white can understatement of antimodern, nature- the insinuation of a distinct “Canadian” settle a house so completely into its envi- Romantic, and picturesque inclinations category of modern architecture accu- ronment. What elsewhere is rationalized as within modernism. rate? Works that seem to embody a a device for setting a building apart from concern for site do represent a prominent nature, in Canada, becomes the means of To understand the significance of other strain in the country’s modern architec- integration.”15 These readings rhetorically strains in the history of modernism, we ture, especially among widely acclaimed assimilate formal elements of modern might begin by noting Peter Gay’s iden- examples. Many Canadian modern archi- architecture as “Canadian” in their sup- tification of modernism as “a call to tects were interested in generating a posed response to landscape. They func- authenticity.” Indeed, while a rhetoric of landscape-minded practice, as manifest tion as a detournement: an alternate, internationalism was attached to modern in period writing on this topic.13 But there Canadian, reading of modern architecture architecture’s development in the 1930s, is scant indication that such efforts are as a whole. Such selective reading might nationally expressive forms are not neces- linked to or motivated by the rubric of also be found in Marco Polo’s characteri- sarily incompatible with modern architec- nation. An interest in landscape was pur- zation of Ottawa’s Brutalist National Arts ture and in a number of locations modern sued for a diversity of rationales. Whether Centre as echoing Group of Seven lands- architecture was heralded as a means Canadian modern architects as a whole capes and in McMinn’s difficult to corrobo- through which to construct a nationally pursued a concern for site in a way dis- rate conclusion that the International Style appropriate built culture.17 An interest in tinct from the variety of modern architec- was “less widely disseminated” in Canada “authentic” forms, inspired by the fields ture manifested globally is hard to judge. than landscape-oriented works. It is also of art history, ethology, and anthro- The same can be said for the notion that apparent in poetic but suppositional rea- pology, shaped the terrain from which this was a dominant body of modernist dings of Canadian architecture as regio- modern architecture emerged. Per Mari practice in Canada. In this way, such cate- nal, such as Milton S. Osborne’s framing Hvattum, thinkers influential to the rise of gorizations function as operative history, of the modernist planes of the Winnipeg modernism sought “a natural and rational using of retroactive analysis to champion Civic Auditorium as harkening to the flat starting point for a theory of human specific goals. These aims include national surfaces of the Prairies, and Herbert Enns’s culture,” one which could imply both identity-definition, specifically a defini- recent similar interpretation of open, universal uniformity and geographical tion predicated on a sense of Canadian gridded Manitoba International Style particularization. Such thinking informed character based on a poetic and construc- practices as echoing the geography of the the definition of modern architects, in the tive relationship to landscape. Canadian plains.16 words of Sigfried Giedion, “not merely as the building of an edifice but also as a Indeed, a modern “Canadian” landscape- MODERNISM AND PLACE building of contemporary life.” And it led orientation has been identified in gestures modernist pioneer Bruno Taut to argue: whose reading as such is dubious. Note, Such processes may be an essential part “All nationalist architecture is bad but all for instance, Harold Kalman’s description of architectural history, a field condi- good architecture is national.”18 of the 1961 Ottawa home of architect Hart tioned by relational social and cultural Massey (fig. 1) as presenting a “characte- forces. However, an emphasis on the Perhaps due to an endemic suspicion of ristically Canadian acceptance of the natu- “Canadian” character of an orientation nationalism and the at times abstract ral setting.”14 A juxtaposition of the Hart to landscape (itself an element at times character of the nation-state, this is not Massey house with Chicago’s 1953 Ben seemingly imagined) distracts from the dominant frame for understanding Rose house (fig. 2) reveals the difficulty our ability to perceive links between a modern architecture of place; this is

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 53 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

FIG. 2. BEN ROSE HOUSE, HIGHLAND PARK, IL, 1953, BY JAMES SPEYER AND DAVID HAID. | FIG. 3. THE CANADIAN INTEREST IN EUROPEAN MODERNIST REFERENCES TO CANADIAN CREATIVE COMMONS NON-COMMERCIAL - CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL. GRAIN ELEVATORS IS MANIFEST IN THE DESIGN OF THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT PAVILION, PARIS EXPOSITION, 1937; CANADIAN GOVERNMENT EXHIBITION COMMISSION, ARCHITECTS. | RAIC JOURNAL, VOL. 14, NO. 10, 1937, P. 203.

instead the notion of regionalism. The Canadian modern architectural writing sites, and material tactility. Architect regionalist turn in modern architecture possesses a prominent strain of regiona- Marianne McKenna stated that “What has was present even in modern architec- lism, including the Massey Commission of become Canadian is what is termed ‘criti- ture’s early history, evident in the con- 1951, which emphasized regional archi- cal regionalism.’” A 2006 exhibit and cata- cerns of such architects as tecture in a national frame. One of its logue by John McMinn and Marco Polo and Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Lewis authors, Eric Arthur, noted: “To talk of a discusses parallels between the works of Mumford, Aldo van Eyck, and Frank Lloyd Canadian architecture is not far-fetched— B.C. Binning, Étienne Gaboury, Clifford Wright. Many of these were inspired by so long as one recognizes differences... To Wiens, Douglas Cardinal, and other the emphasis on authenticity and region- talk, on the other hand, of a Canadian vis-à-vis critical regionalism.21 ality that formed an important strain of architecture indistinguishable in man- But critical regionalism has had little role nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ner from coast to coast is to deny the in the discussion of this presumed natio- architectural thought, particularly as basic principles of modern architecture nal architectural interest. Rochon, for ins- manifested in the Arts and Crafts. By and to ignore the cultural heritage of tance, who instead ascribes a Canadian the postwar years these themes were our country.” Douglas Simpson, Étienne “state of mind” as key, has directly rejec- popularized and developed, as manifest Gaboury, and other Canadians likewise ted this connection. This rejection has in Sigfried Giedion’s concept of “New endorsed regionalist strategies.20 worthwhile grounding. As discussed by Regionalism” and James Stirling’s 1957 Keith Eggener in his article “A Critique of “Regionalism and Modern Architecture,” Connections to international regionalist Critical Regionalism,” this frame possesses the first of which argues that the domin- practices have been explored; Lisa Rochon limitations, including the implication that ance of internationalist rhetoric in mod- and George Kapelos, for instance, trace regionally minded work is more radica- ernism was in fact relatively isolated to the influences of non-Canadian regiona- lized or autochthonous than in actuality.22 the 1920s and early 1930s.19 lists on Canadian architects. But paired Nevertheless, the resonance between the with an emphasis on the national charac- characterizations of modern architecture CANADA, REGIONALISM, ter of such architecture, links to broader in Canada and regionalism should be AND LANDSCAPE discourses are obscured. This is particu- emphasized, particularly if we understand larly true regarding critical regionalism, this term as part of a larger category of Indeed, a language of place and lands- a category that much work defined as context orientation in modern architec- cape in Canadian modern architecture “Canadian” parallels, especially as framed ture and not as loaded with the specific during the period of its creation was by Kenneth Frampton who stresses sculp- quirks of Frampton’s definition or as a largely not one of nation, but of region. tural rooflines, construction on untamed manifestation of post-modernism.

54 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

There is scant indication that regiona- setting.”25 Within this quote lie ideas of early twentieth-century Canadian disin- lism in Canada was linked to the rubric Canadian character recapitulated in the terest in a European-originated modern of nation. In this capacity, a slippage in reading of landscape-oriented moder- architecture in favour of a continued definitions of Canadian modern archi- nism as “Canadian,” most centrally the theoretical emphasis on the question tecture appears to be a collapse of the idea of harmony with the environment. of the architectural representation of difference between an interest in lands- Exploring and making clear these ideas national identity.28 This phase might cape, regionalism, and a national frame might help us understand the prevalence be read as including early modernist- of reference. However, definitions of of these interpretations and grasp their informed works which involved the decor- “Canadian” modern architecture have relationship to modern architecture, ative highlighting of Canadian nature and gone beyond identifying regionalism as modernity, and nationalism. landscape, such as that of John Lyle. a notable strain in Canadian architecture. Rather, they have considered regionalism DERIVING IDENTITY NEGATIVELY Internationalism left a more irregular itself as a strategy legible as Canadian. impression in Canada. While it has been What forms the basis for this line of thin- An essential element of Massey’s point is argued that the International Style was king? An inevitable figure in this discus- the contraposition of Canada against the “less widely disseminated in Canada,” in sion is Northrop Frye. As Sherry McKay United States. Canadian self-definition truth examples of the Canadian embrace notes, Frye argued that “the question of against America, which enacts a simpli- of a European-derived modernism can be Canadian identity, so far as it affects the fication of both “other” and self, has found across the country in large num- creative imagination, is not a ‘Canadian’ long been a recognizable constituent of bers, tentatively in the 1930s and en question at all, but a regional question.” the country’s culture. This tendency also masse by the postwar years.29 Yet archi- This sense of the nation’s character is appears to inform and structure defin- tectural internationalism in Canada was transmitted in the common formulation itions of “Canadian” modern architec- more limited in literature than it was of Canada as a “nation of regions,” a ture.26 A useful model to understand the manifest in practice. A notable example notion that often structures how modern function of this process is proposed by is Alan Gowans’s Building Canada of Canadian practice has been presented. Eggener in his analysis of similar themes 1966. Gowans lauded architecture that The size of the country and the disparate in American practice. He proposes a acknowledged, above all, Canada’s status character of its population centres under- three-stage model for the relationship as a member nation of the “Western pin this concept.23 to modernism in America. This begins World,” and called “Irredentist nation- with nationalism: an era of antipathy to alism” a “cancer,” deeming architecture These notions undergird the aforemen- modern architecture read as European, as “the most mature of the Canadian tioned definitions of a “Canadian” body a phase coincident with a post-colonial arts precisely because it has rejected of modern architecture. Yet contempo- United States peripheral to Europe. This irrational fears of corrupting influences rary interpretive constructions of this phase is followed by internationalism and, from beyond the confines of the coun- category have often focused not on ultimately, “naturalization”: the American try’s political borders.”30 regionalism but on the notion of “alli- linking of building and site and the rec- ance with landscape” and a valuing of lamation of the American roots of modern Likewise, a Canadian “naturalization” a “sense of place.”24 To unravel why, we architecture in mass industry, process presents a divergent path. It can might start by considering a statement engineering, and the Chicago School. be found in the thinking of Canadians on historical Canadian architecture, one With the latter stage, by the 1950s, mod- such as Eric Arthur and Milton Osborne typical of the nationalizing readings ern architecture could be found through- who, in the first half of the twentieth discussed by Thomas. In 1967 Governor out the United States, minus anxiety of century, welcomed European modernist General Vincent Massey, while describing foreign influence and, in the words of references to Canadian grain elevators Canada’s parliament buildings, stated: “I Henry Russell Hitchcock, was “almost syn- as precedent and found inspiration for hope it is not too fanciful to suggest that onymous with American architecture.”27 a modern “Canadian” architecture in the style is essentially Canadian, not only such thinking31 (fig. 3). This half of the because it is different from the legisla- Is it possible to apply this schema to the “naturalization” process was, nearly from tive buildings in the United States... but Canadian experience? The first, national- the beginning, twinned with the notion because it fits perfectly into its northern ist, stage is easy to discern in the general of linking building and site, a language

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 55 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

of regionalism and attention to land- Canada, and the Myth of Converging Up North. Both of these echo the lar- scape, a pattern evident in practice and Values (, Penguin Press) in order ger category of Northern Romanticism, in readings thereof. Over time this strain to emphasize the differences between which, per Robert Rosenblum, played an of naturalization came to dominate; by the two nations.32 important role in modernism as a whole the 1970s there was a paucity of claims and which was especially nature-Roman- for modern architecture itself as Canadian NORTHERNNESS AND NATURE tic in its location of a source of meaning or concomitant with Canadian values and in landscape.34 identity. The dominance of this one-sided But why was an orientation to land- “naturalization” rhetoric on a landscape- scape identified as a “Canadian” strat- Yet Massey’s point also invokes another oriented modernism (with its nationalist egy rather than other modes? Part of notion: that of a special Canadian link undertones) arrives with the 1960s and this interpretation necessarily relates to to land.35 This centring of geography in 1970s—the focus of Buchanan’s “Heroic the ways in which modern architecture Canadian character is represented well period” and a central moment in Rochon’s has been read, the understatement or in Frye’s statement that the key ques- text and elsewhere. marginalization of themes of nature- tion regarding the country’s identity was Romanticism, anthropological thinking, not “Who am I?” but “Where is here?”36 It seems likely that interpretations of and regionalism, and an emphasis on the While all nation-states are defined Canadian modern architecture engaged International Style which has tended to by place, a geographical emphasis on in self-definition against the United flatten and mischaracterize the meaning the concept of nationality is stressed States by emphasizing tendencies that of formal divergences from this mode, in Canadian accounts. Discussing the ran counter to a dominant, American- many of which ought to be understood international modern architectural identified, definition of modernism, one as functioning within a modernist sphere. presentation of Canada at the Venice that stressed the International Style and However, this reading also has to do with Biennale, Elsa Lam points to the deep its postwar association with capitalist notions of Canadian identity. roots of this concept of Canadianness, industry. This is true even if many roots citing Gottfried Semper’s 1851 Canada of this “Canadian” strain of modernism Beyond the aforementioned logic of a display at London’s Great Exhibition. lay south of the border. This pattern nation of regions, we might also note But what is the deeper meaning of this would account for an understatement in Massey’s articulation of Parliament’s “per- tendency, and how does it relate to the the similarities between Canadian and fect fit” with northern setting, a rhetoric conditions of modernity, nationalism, American practices, a slippage parallel to of “northernness” relating to the neo- and modernism?37 that described by Thomas in “Canadian Gothic idiom of the buildings, a language Castles.” Thomas postulates that earlier which parallels ethnic conceptions of Beyond regionalism, a focus on landscape Canadian historians under-represented Canadian identity as a dual partnership of has other meanings. As noted by Christine American influence in a manner condi- English and French. Thomas argues that Macy and Sarah Bonnemaison, while tioned by the American war in Vietnam this understanding of Canadian architec- many nations have defined their iden- and the Watergate scandal. This pat- ture ends with the advent of the univer- tity through their landscape, in the New tern, too, is echoed in contemporary salism of modernism, which is largely the World such thinking had deeper salience. accounts of Canadian modern archi- case. However, Parkin does recapitulate Americans, for instance, “sought susten- tecture. Rochon’s book, in its rejection such thinking in his 1961 statement on ance for their national ego” in seeking of critical regionalism as a significant the nation’s practice, arguing that Canada “something valuable and distinctive that frame for Canadian practice, describes is unlikely to produce architects “of the could transform embarrassed provin- the theorized Canadian “mindset” as sensuous virtuosity of an Alfonso Reidy or cials into proud and confident citizens” counter to an America she defines as an Antonio Gaudi, nor engineers of the by turning to one sense in which their “what we are not—gun toting, not evan- kind of [Eduardo] Torroja or [Pier Luigi] country was different; “nature in the gelical, not war-mongering,” the latter Nervi, for we are essentially a nation of New World had no counterpart in the a reference to the most recent war in North European origin, philosophy and Old. Specifically, it was wilder.”38 This Iraq. The author goes so far as to include conviction.”33 Non-ethic rhetoric of north- model mirrors Canadian processes of self- statistics from Michael Adam’s 2003 best- ernness and a kind of northern alterity definition, which were likely informed by seller Fire and Ice: The United States, is evident in the title of Rochon’s text: American models.

56 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

Those who have examined the specific aims lie behind an architectural orienta- life.” Brockelman argues that the concept cultural and political role of such think- tion to landscape. While a few statements of place presents to antimodern thinkers a ing in Canada make another compelling by architects indicate such thinking may “phenomenon of enticing concreteness”; argument on this subject. In the words have played a role, it seems that such he deems “the phenomenon of place as of Ian McKay, Canadian interwar thinkers nationalizing work was largely the prod- aporia of the modern.” Antimodernism and artists, including the Group of Seven, uct of interpretation. In this way, it is was also often closely tied to nationalism. “new-liberal,” and Laurentian histor- likely that the motivation for Canadian As characterized by Benedict Anderson ians, narrated the nation in ways which landscape-oriented architecture shares these two tendencies were linked: “The grounded “the nation on the bedrock more with its international brethren than modernist-antimodernist aporia was by truth of the landscape.”39 This process with a Canadian nationalist project. no means extraordinary... Nationalism, of imagining the meaning of a Canadian with its complex appeal to a vanished community drew on the nation’s large ANTIMODERN MODERNISM or imagined past and its ambitions for a size and wilderness. But, as empha- limitless future, appears as the ordinary sized by R. Cole Harris, it also offered an At the same time, it must be noted that response to the aporia.”43 importantly “culturally neutral” idea of the project of Canadian national iden- nationality, shifting the focus from the tity-finding in landscape is a process of The commonality of antimodern senti- already multicultural islands of settlement antimodern self-realization. It involved ment in Canada, particularly in the arts, to the rocks between: a “disembodied identifying a perceived authentic basis has been well discussed. D.M.R. Bentley Canada [that] could present an illusion through which to reconcile a modern argues that “more efficaciously than any of unity.”40 This interpretation points to dilemma: the question of national iden- mind-cure therapy, new architectural Canada’s status as one of the first mod- tity in the modern world, a condition styles and urban arrangements” were ern, multiethnic, pluralist nation-states. read as unrooted and overly abstract. seen as able to “repair the psychological, In this view landscape fuelled a Canadian Developed by historian T.J. Jackson Lears, sociological, and spiritual ravages of Kultur, one which eased and which sup- the concept of antimodernism originated modernity.”44 How might antimodernism ported a growing national Zivilization. within the study of late nineteenth- and have been manifested in architecture? early twentieth-century American culture. Antimodernist feeling, according to Lynda How does architecture relate to this pat- Lears identifies a dissatisfaction regard- Jessup, often involved “a critique of the tern? Rochon and others have traced the ing aspects of modernity as having arisen modern, a perceived lack in the present connections between certain Canadian during this period of history. He classifies manifesting itself not only in a sense architects and the Group of Seven. this sense as “antimodernism.” Lears’s ter- of alienation, but also in a longing for Canadian practitioners may indeed have minology refers not to any specific aes- the types of physical or spiritual experi- drawn, consciously or unconsciously, on thetic doctrine but to social and cultural ence embodied in utopian futures and this entrenched and popular line of think- movements expressing sentiment counter imagined pasts.”45 Sentiments of this kind ing. The Group, however, was explicit to the processes of modernity. He argues: are apparent throughout the discourse of about its nationalist ambitions. It was “antimodern dissent has survived most modern architecture. They are particularly informed in this way and its aesthetics conspicuously in avant-garde art and lit- notable in critical architectural advocation by European national Romantic examples. erature” that “has so often protested the for the renewal and even vivification of This is not true of modern Canadian archi- effects of modernization.”42 modernism and the repeated questioning tects. While a few early Canadian inter- of an overemphasis on functionalism. This locutors of modern architecture (such as The valuing of landscape and place is an enrichment of modern architecture was John Lyle) fused somewhat modern for- important element in antimodern think- often sough through an embrace of the mal gestures with ornament highlighting ing. Thomas Brockelman characterizes this poetic, imaginative formal approaches, the Canadian landscape for nationalist pattern thusly: “in the past two centur- and tactile materials. reasons, this approach did not gain wide- ies to embrace place has meant to resist spread popularity.41 As modernism pro- the ‘abstract’ character of modern life... Many such statements, as Stirling’s gressed, with the removal of ornament Under the banner of topos, a battle is mid-1950s discussions of the “Crisis of as a vehicle of signification, it is nearly fought, the battle against the leveling Rationalism,” can be read as reflect- impossible to determine if nationalizing and universalizing tendencies of modern ing deeper societal concerns. In this

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 57 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

way these works correspond with Sarah essay by Hart Massey argued: “function seen as part of an antimodern response Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault’s by itself is an insufficient basis for what to a perceived modern impoverishment. formulation of an “anxious modernism,” is properly claimed as an art,” and articu- Viewed from this angle, attention to a term postwar architectural modern- lated the importance of architecture’s place—whether in the built environment ists united “in their determination to “spiritual” role.47 or in the reading thereof—involves not a renew rather than abandon the legacy of landscape-oriented narration of nation, twentieth-century modernism” by recast- Notably, the titular concept of the latter but is emblematic of a broader response ing some of its tenets and abandoning piece, “Only Half an Architecture,” was to dilemmas of the modern. Yet these others. These revisions aimed at solv- later echoed by Arthur Erickson, who responses resemble one another. Like ing contemporary needs and anxieties. referred to landscape as the missing half such discourses in modern architecture, In arguing for tactility and poetry such of West Coast architecture. This sense a landscape-based concept of Canadian figures were arguing not against modern was construed as pertinent to Canada’s identity emphasizes place in an antimod- architecture writ large, but expressing an modern architecture as a whole in John C. ern fashion to fight “the battle against antimodern “yearning” for, in the words Parkin’s 1962 speech. In this way a gen- the levelling and universalizing tenden- of Lears, “authentic experience—physical, eralized call for a reinvigorated modern- cies of modern life” and seeks meaning emotional, or spiritual” and, often, dem- ism that echoed international trends was in landscape and place.50 Both involve the onstrating an unease with the “stifling manifested in a concern for landscape presentation of a concreteness: the first overorganization” of modernity. These that was, via Parkin, reconfigured as a sig- architecturally, the second vis-à-vis the practices also prefigure and inform critical nifier of a Canadian identity.48 But in both modern nation-state. regionalism’s attempt at “resistance” to cases, the thrust is the notion of a mod- the dominance of universal, rational, ern architecture imagined not as formally MODERNISM industrial “civilization.”46 pure but as capable of responding to an AND THE PICTURESQUE antimodern sense of modern disenchant- These discussions had currency in Canada ment. It is this sense, one distinct from This concurrence points toward other as well. In 1950 Eric Arthur asked “is abstract and technical concentrations, historical continuities that have been Function enough?” and posited mod- that underlies many period arguments, obscured by the idea of modernism as ern architecture as capable of enriching those which called for the integration necessarily representing a radical break the experience of modernity. Similarly, with site and landscape, what might be with the past. The first of these, as dis- B.C. Binning argued for a vivification of termed the various “new” or other “prefix cussed, is the recapitulation of patterns modern architecture through the inclu- modernisms,” and, in the words of Rhodri evident in the reading of historic Canadian sion of art, a stance that mirrors some Liscombe, the postwar modern architec- practices in nationalist readings of mod- earlier thought. This sense of tural “revival of stylism.” Many of these ern architecture as “Canadian.” The impoverishment also characterized the arguments promoted material means second is the similarity in these cases of discussion of material means; Frederic divergent from those of a perceived ban- the formal means judged as signifying the Lasserre, for instance, stated his ambiva- alized modernism, often identified with “Canadian.” For example, Kelly Crossman lence to the functionalist International advanced capitalism. Materials that tan- lists four formal elements as typical of Style “curtain wall” in 1955: “The so- gibly demonstrated their natural origins late nineteenth- and early twentieth-cen- called curtain wall... is perhaps the ter- and relationship to historical idioms were tury definitions of Canadian style: local minal glib architectural answer to man’s held up to this end.49 materials, deference to climate, Canadian general desire for more light and more themes in ornament, and a self-conscious view.” He elaborated: “A full street of In this same vein, Goldhagen and Legault use of traditional Quebec styles and man- Lever Buildings is a grimly brittle night- argue that postwar modern architects ners of building. A link to landscape has mare to contemplate, as would be a who favoured locally inflected architec- been perceived through the means of waterfront of only Mies’ [van der Rohe] ture did not do so to express national iden- archetypal modernism (steel and glass, type of apartment blocks... architecture tity, but rather “on the grounds that an pilotis, the colour white). More often, should respect its responsibility to cre- architecture of ‘place’ would combat the however, it is versions of Crossman’s four ate interest and give dignity in street numbing iterability of the International elements that are stressed in accounts and urban architecture.” Further, a 1951 Style.” As such, regionalism might be of modernism read as Canadian due to

58 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

FIG. 4. RON THOM, TRENT UNIVERSITY, PETERBOROUGH, ON, 1969. | COURTESY OF TRENT UNIVERSITY. FIG. 5. CANADIAN PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, OTTAWA, ON. CENTRE BLOCK, 1916, BY JOHN PEARSON AND JEAN-OMER MARCHAND; LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT, 1876, BY THOMAS FULLER AND CHILION JONES. | JEFFREY THORSTEINSON.

engagement with landscape: local, tac- Yet these material and formal similarities However, prompted by the afore- tile materials; thematization of context; are shared with numerous contemporan- mentioned Canadian historical similar- deference to climate; and allusions to eous and earlier international modernist ities, we might also note the shared formal past . (These means also practices. Examples include: the embrace elements, and their common association echo those advocated by Frampton as of wood siding and shingles in the work of with attention to place, between modern definitive to critical regionalism: tactil- Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and many architecture and older historic practices. ity, “bounded” place-form, and a dia- others; the sculptural forms and silhouettes In particular, many of these strategies mir- lectical consideration of nature involving of several postwar works; and much of the ror the picturesque, a recurring term in response to topography, context, climate, “tactile” use of field stone and concrete in the discussions of historic practices read light, and tectonics.) To underline these modern and Brutalist practices. Some of as Canadian. The roots of the picturesque similarities, we might note the formal these gestures have been read to repre- reside in the eighteenth-century English resemblances of such chronologically sent a modern regionalism. This terminol- thought of William Gilpin, Richard Payne divergent examples as Ron Thom’s 1960s ogy, however, glosses over the material Knight, Humphrey Repton, and Thomas Trent University campus (fig. 4) and aesthetics and other themes operative Whately regarding the lessons which Canada’s Parliament buildings (fig. 5), therein. While at times developed with architecture and landscape design might Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Masssey’s reference to region, these gestures more draw from painting (fig. 7). Christopher 1964 Graham House (fig. 6), and William generally embody deliberate contrast with Hussey assigns the picturesque a domin- Hay’s nineteenth-century advocacy for a facets of modernity such as functionalism, ant role in the “aesthetic relation of man Canadian wooden architecture with very the ordered character of the International to nature,” describing it as a key constitu- little ornamentation.51 As such, elements Style, and the often polished products of ent in the eighteenth-century history of seen as definitive of a “Canadian” mod- advanced capitalism. In this sense a more taste, one which sought the concilia- ern architecture do appear a revival, or useful concept may be that developed by tion of man and landscape. Picturesque survival, of the traits which characterized Jorge Otero Pailos: “architectural phe- aesthetics and thought embraced “the historic concepts of “Canadian” architec- nomenology.” This term characterizes the vague, the local, the sentimental, and ture. This point is underlined if we note postwar architectural theoretical interest the subjective,” while also inclining the coincidence of this “heroic period” in the philosophy of phenomenology as toward nationalism in the promotion of with the late 1960s: crucible years in the an ahistorical experiential constant, a path “the value of British scenery.”53 Gestures definition of modern Canadian nation- offering an essentialist remedy in contrast posited as demonstrative of these values hood and the rhetoric Thomas discusses. to postmodern disunity and confusion.52 included, beyond historical revivalism,

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 59 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

FIG. 6. GRAHAM HOUSE, WEST , BC, 1962, BY ARTHUR ERICKSON AND GEOFFREY FIG. 7. VIEW OF A RUINED CASTLE OVER A GORGE, 1798, GRAPHITE, WATERCOLOUR AND INK MASSEY. | COURTESY OF ERICKSON ESTATE COLLECTION, ARTHURERICKSON.COM. ON PAPER, 25 X 26 CM, IMITATOR OF REV. WILLIAM GILPIN. | TATE, 2016, [HTTP://WWW.TATE.ORG.UK/ART/ ARTWORKS/GILPIN-VIEW-OF-A-RUINED-CASTLE-OVER-A-GORGE-T09538].

the embrace of rough surface, sensitive one largely conceived with reference to Canadian nationalist, antimodern, and siting, and irregularity (both of silhou- landscape: the implication that, as para- architectural phenomenological focus ette and of tone). In this light, certain phrased by Marc Grignon, “the designer on landscape as a solution to perceived works that have been read to typify should not impose abstract plans on a dilemmas. The roots of a modern pictur- “Canadian” modern architecture might landscape, but should work with was is esque in Canada, however, also owe much also be thought of as representing a pic- there, in accordance with the genius of to the American experience. As argued by turesque modern architecture. the place, or genius loci.” Such a location John Conron, the American picturesque of meaning in nature as a response to has been an under-acknowledged cultural The most prominent characterization of a the deracinated character of the modern body of work, one that informed modern picturesque modernism is in the postwar corresponds with the rise of a Romantic architecture’s “cultural project of visual British context, where the term played interest in nature during the early years narration.”56 As in America, a vector for a role in the debates between Nikolaus of industrialization.55 Notably, this pic- this tradition in Canada was surely the Pevsner, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, and turesque approach, enacted through the Arts and Crafts movement, which had a others associated with The Architectural aforementioned formal means, arose strong legacy in the country. Review and the Townscape movement; during an eighteenth-century period Colin Rowe and Alan Colquhoun; and of sudden aesthetic uncertainty. This Interestingly, one valence of the pic- eventually the new monumentality moment’s importance to the genealogy turesque is a sense of ownership. Leslie endorsed by Reyner Banham and the of modern architecture in the longue Dawn, for instance, has traced the con- Smithsons.54 These accounts have empha- durée is well covered in Peter Collins’s nections of the Group of Seven to pictur- sized some of the term’s formal and seminal Changing Ideals in Modern esque traditions, questioning the meaning thematic connotations, such as irregu- Architecture, 1750-1950. Its connection to of picturesque and artistic engagement larity, eclecticism, and integration with modernism is implied within Henry Russell with landscape in Canada as signifying urban context. But we can also centre on Hitchcock’s 1929 text on Romanticism colonialist intent.57 Dawn argues that this another of the genre’s original themes, and Reintegration. This pattern echoes undercurrent of ownership is particularly

60 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

notable in Canada, a nation forged on identity are antinomies: the natural and liberal democratic institutions, technol- indigenous land. John Ralston Saul, who the invented, the local and the universal. ogy, multiculturalism, and what historian speaks out against Frye’s notion of a These dialogues belong within historian J.M.S. [James Maurice Stockford] Careless Canadian “garrison mentality,” offers an Michael T. Saler’s broader catalogue of has termed Canada’s “limited identities.”61 alternate reading. Saul states of Canada: antinomies which have fuelled modern- “We have had lots of time for our ‘social ist thought and practice: primitivism and Histories of practice should reflect the imagination [to] take root.’” He empha- futurism, expressionism and rationalism, complexity of built culture. The notion sizes Canadian culture as indigenized in and romanticism.59 While his- of a specifically Canadian landscape- its citizen’s efforts at “reconciling them- torians have claimed landscape-oriented minded modernism possesses nationalist selves into the indigenous landscape.”58 modernism as Canadian by framing these characteristics. But, with that in mind, This thinking proposes another potential practices against others, such works we should nevertheless note the paral- source of inspiration for those seeking reflect the varied make-up of modern lels between patterns in modern architec- authentic meaning through landscape in architecture as a whole, one based on ture and ideas of Canadian identity. This the modern era. these antinomies. The ground work for genre of interpretation is an important acknowledging this reality has been well constituent in a multivalent history of An emphasis on the Canadianness of stated in recent arguments against read- Canadian architecture and within a the- concern for landscape in Canadian mod- ing modern architecture in monolithic matic history of Canadian architecture. Its ern architecture has obscured the char- terms cited herein.60 roots and meaning are tied to the nation’s acter of modern architecture writ large past, its sense of identity, and its mod- as engaged with landscape and formal A landscape-centred interpretation ern condition. The notion of “Canadian” gestures which might be read in this of Canadian modern architecture may modern architecture reflects a continual, way. However, while narrow definitions have dissipated over time. An emphasis international perception of the deracin- of national style ought to be questioned, on regionalism continues, often with- ated character of the modern, and points it is worthwhile to note the resonance out nationalizing language, spurred us toward the richness of response in between motifs in the analysis and prac- by localized logic of architectural pub- Canada and elsewhere to the questions tice of modern Canadian architecture and lishing in a moderately populated vast and answers posited by modernity, the past concepts of Canadian architecture country of far-spread cities and regions. nation-state, and modern architecture. and identity. These similarities indicate Discussions of landscape and architecture a continuation in modern architecture are instead infused with and superseded NOTES of historical themes. This continuity has by a language of late twentieth- and been masked by an emphasis on the twenty-first-century ecologism. Eight 1. Moriyama, Raymond, 1983, “Foreword,” in Leon Whiteson (ed.), Modern Canadian revolutionary character, universalism, years after his 1962 characterization of Architecture, , Hurtig Publishers, and functionalism of this field, and a dis- Canadian practice, writing in Progressive p. 6-7. regard for antimodern, nature-Roman- Architecture on the same subject, Parkin 2. Buchanan, Peter, 1994, “Back to the Future,” tic, and picturesque inclinations as part emphasized other concepts of national Canadian Architect, vol. 39, no. 3, p. 21-30. of modernism as a whole. Undergirding character, namely the role of the liberal His examples include Erickson-Massey’s these parallels are typically modern senti- democratic state. Recent historical vol- and the Australian- Canadian John Andrews’s Scarborough ments that connect modernism and the umes have offered composite accounts College. Smithson, Alison Margaret and Peter rise of the nation-state. more conditional than those theorizing Smithson, 1981, The Heroic Period of Modern a Canadian approach predicated on a Architecture, New York, Rizzoli. As such, these readings of modern relationship with landscape. Works such 3. McMinn, John, 2000, “Double Vision,” Canadian architecture correspond to as Architecture and the Canadian Fabric Canadian Architect, vol. 45, no. 4, p. 20-30. mythic notions of Canadian identity, while offer not broad narratives but imply the 4. Rochon, Lisa, 2005, Up North: Where Canada’s also reflecting broader, international pro- complexity of practice, largely avoiding Architecture Meets the Land, Toronto, Key cesses of questioning issues of locality totalizing conclusions. Yet these accounts, Porter Books, p. 16. and universality, function, and meaning too, reflect an operative character condi- 5. Note de la rédactrice : À l’occasion des in the modern era. Indeed, ingrained in tioned by more contemporary concepts of commémorations du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération en 2017, la question du modernism and in questions of modern national character: a Canada forged by its

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 61 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

nationalisme canadien et de l’identité cana- Deane, and Sarah Butler (eds.), Nationalism Journal of British Studies, vol. 48, no. 2, dienne en architecture est particulièrement and Architecture, Abingdon-on-Thames, p. 441-465. pertinente. Cependant, l’essai sur l’architec- UK, Routledge, coll. “Ashgate Studies in 18. Hvattum, Mari, 2002, Gottfried Semper and the ture canadienne moderne publié dans ce Architecture,” p. 115-134. Problem of , Cambridge, Cambridge numéro fournit une analyse basée unique- 11. Viloria, James, 1999, “The Politics of the ‘We’ University Press; Giedion, Sigfried, 1954, “The ment sur les publications produites en langue in the Construction of Collective Identities in State of Contemporary Architecture I: The anglaise. Le comité éditorial du Journal de la Histories of Architecture in Canada,” Journal Regional Approach,” Architectural Record, SÉAC souhaiterait donc recevoir un article of the Society for the Study of Architecture in vol. 115, no. 1, p. 132-137; Bozdogan, Sibel, équivalent traitant du même thème, sur la Canada, vol. 24, no. 4, p. 10-17. 2011, “The Legacy of an Istanbul Architect,” base des écrits et publications en langue in Jean-Francois Lejeune and Michelangelo française. 12. Thomas, Christopher, 1997, “‘Canadian Sabatino (eds.), Modern Architecture and Castles’? The Question of National Styles in Editor’s note: With the upcoming 150th anni- the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Architecture Revisited,” Journal of Canadian versary of Confederation in 2017, the issue of Contested Identities, Abingdon-on-Thames, Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, p. 5-27. Canadian nationalism and Canadian identity UK, Routledge, p. 141-156. It has been argued seems to be particularly pertinent. This essay 13. Gaboury, Étienne, 1980, “Toward a Prairie that nineteenth-century concepts of national on Modern Canadian architecture, however, Architecture,” Prairie Forum, vol. 5, style have led to a modernist manner of thin- primarily provides an analysis of the architec- no. 2, p. 237-247; Simpson, Douglas C., king about architecture. See: Watkin, David, tural literature and bibliography produced in 1953, “Towards Regionalism in Canadian 2001, Morality and Architecture Revisited, the English language. As such, the Journal of Architecture,” Canadian Art, vol. 10, no. 3, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. the SSAC calls for someone to rise to the chal- p. 110-113. 19. Goldhagen, Sarah Williams and Réjean lenge to write a complementary article that 14. Kalman, Harold, 1994, A History of Canadian Legault, 2001, “Introduction,” in Sarah examines the same theme, on the basis of the Architecture, Toronto, Oxford University Press, Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault French-language writings and publications. p. 811. (eds.), Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation 6. Among them the works of Shim-Sutcliffe, 15. Parkin, John C., 1962, “Architecture in Canada in Postwar Architectural Culture, Cambridge, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, and Patkau Since 1945,” RAIC Journal [Royal Architectural MIT Press, p. 11-23; Stirling, James, 1957, Architects. Institute of Canada], vol. 39, no. 1, p. 33-40. “Regionalism and Modern Architecture,” Architect’s Yearbook, vol. 7, p. 62-68; Giedion, 7. Boddy, Trevor, 2012, “Mega and Micro. This article was the text of an address by “The State of Contemporary Architecture…,” Canada, Invention of Extremes,” in Luis Parkin delivered to the American Society of op. cit. Fernández-Galiano (ed.), Atlas: Architectures Architectural Historians. Here, Parkin argued: of the 21st Century. America, Madrid, “If there is to be a significant Canadian archi- 20. Arthur, Eric, 1951, “Architecture and Town Arquitectura Viva, p. 14. Such a reading of tectural contribution in the next decade, many Planning,” Massey Royal Commission on the contemporary practice is manifest in Kapelos, of us hope it will be in creating lessons in how National Development in the Arts, Letters and George, 1994, Interpretations of Nature: buildings might be skillfully sited with respect Sciences, Ottawa, Edmond Cloutier, Printer to Contemporary Canadian Architecture, to other buildings by other authors... central the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, p. 216-221; Landscape and Urbanism, Kleinburg, ON, problem of the collective environment is the Gaboury, “Toward a Prairie Architecture,” op. McMichael Canadian Art Collection. immediate task we Canadian architects have cit.; and Simpson, “Towards Regionalism in accepted as a challenge.” He also cited Arthur Canadian Architecture,” op. cit. 8. Gruft, Andrew (ed.), 2005, Substance Erickson: “Most of our buildings are only half Over Spectacle: Contemporary Canadian 21. Frampton, Kenneth, 1983, “Towards a Critical buildings... because the other half is the site.” Architecture, Vancouver, Arsenal Pulp Press. Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture While not focused on links to landscape, this 16. McMinn : 22; Osborne, Milton, S., 1937, “The of Resistance,” in Hal Foster (ed.), The Anti- text presents Canadian architecture as groun- Architectural Heritage of Manitoba,” in Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ded. This is telegraphed in the title’s pairing Rupert Clendon Lodge (ed.), Manitoba Essays, Port Townsend, Press, p. 16-30; McKenna, “substance over spectacle,” implying a mate- Toronto, Macmillan Company of Canada, Marianne, 1998, “Critical Globalism,” World rial and meaningful negation “Spectacle,” p. 53-88; Enns, Herbert, 2006, “Wide Open Architecture, vol. 7, no. 10, p. 54; McMinn, John the Situationist term for the disorienting Spaces: Manitoba’s Modernist Landscapes,” and Marco Polo, 2008, 41° to 66°: Regional confluence of capitalism and mass media. in Serena Keshavjee and Herbert Enns (eds.), Responses to in Notably, the description of a particularly Winnipeg Modern, Winnipeg, University of Canada, Cambridge, ON, Cambridge Galleries, “Canadian” category of landscape-oriented Manitoba Press, p. 153-181. Design at Riverside. modern architecture seems to carry less reso- 17. Gay, Peter, 1998, Pleasure Wars. The Bourgeois 22. Rochon : 23; Eggener, Keith L., 2002, “Placing nance outside of the country. Experience: Victoria to Freud, New York, Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism,” 9. Adams, Annmarie and Martin Bressani, 2003, Norton, 1998; Mansbach, Stephen A., 2006, Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 55, “Canada: The Edge Condition,” Journal of the “Modernist Architecture and Nationalist vol. 4, p. 228-237. Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 62, Aspiration in the Baltic: Two Case Studies,” 23. McKay, Sherry, 2005, “Ideas of Canadian no. 1, p. 75-83. Journal of the Society of Architectural Architecture,” in Andrew Gruft (ed.), Historians, vol. 65, no. 1, p. 92-111; Whyte, 10. Crinson, Mark, 2012, “The Building Without Substance Over Spectacle: Contemporary William, 2009, “The Englishness of English a Shadow: National Identity and the Canadian Architecture, Vancouver, Arsenal Architecture: Modernism and the Making of International Style,” in Raymond Quek, Darren Pulp Press, p. 191-201; Lehr, John C., 2003, a National International Style, 1927-1957,”

62 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

“Ethnicity, Space and Place in Canada’s 36. Frye, Northrop, 1995 [1971], The Bush Garden: demonstrating antimodern inclinations Cultural Archipelago: The Construction of Essays on the Canadian Imagination, Toronto, (“Bushwhackers in the Gallery…” : 131). Identity,” in Klaus Martens (ed.), The Canadian House of Anansi Press, p. 219. Bentley, D.M.R., 2006, “Chapter 7: Northern Alternative, Würzburg, Königshausen and Reflections: Architecture, Poetics, and 37. Lam, Elsa, 2008, “Wilderness Nation: The Myth Neumann GmbH, p. 23-36. Modernity in the Post-Confederation Period,” of Nature in Canadian Architecture,” Journal in D.M.R. Bentley (ed.), Canadian Architects: 24. Rochon : 16. Rochon looks to the 1939 B.C. of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Essays on Literature and Architecture in Binning House in as “kick- Canada, vol. 33, no. 2, p. 11-20. Canada, 1759-2005, London, ON, Canadian starting” this tendency. 38. Bonnemaison, Sarah and Christine Macy, Poetry Press, [http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/ 25. Thomas : 9. 2003, Architecture and Nature: Creating the architexts/essays/northern_reflections.htm], American Landscape, Abingdon-on-Thames, 26. This sense is partially addressed in Adams accessed August 31, 2016. Routledge, p. 1. Quote from Roderick Nash. and Bressani’s article on Canada’s “Edge 45. Jessup, “Bushwhackers in the Gallery…” : 131. Condition,” op. cit. 39. McKay, Ian, 2001, “Handicrafts and the Logic 46. Stirling, James, 1956, “Ronchamp: Le of ‘Commercial Antimodernism,’” in Lynda 27. Eggener, Keith L., 2006, “Nationalism, Corbusier’s Chapel and the Crisis of Jessup (ed.), Antimodernism and Artistic Internationalism and the ‘Naturalisation’ of Rationalism,” Architectural Review, vol. 119, Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modern Architecture in the United States, March, p. 161. See also: Rowe, Colin, 1950, Modernism, Toronto, 1925-1940,” National Identities, vol. 8, no. 3, “Mannerism and Modern Architecture,” Press, p. 117-129. p. 243-258. The Architectural Review, vol. 107, May, 40. Harris, R. Cole, 1986, “Regionalism and the 28. These themes are well-covered in Crossman, p. 29-58; Lapidus, Morris, 1961, “A Quest for Canadian Archipelago,” in J.M. Bumstead Kelly, 1990, Architecture in Transition: From Emotion in Architecture,” AIA Journal, vol. 36, (ed.), Interpreting Canada’s Past, Volume Art to Practice, 1885-1906, Montreal-Kingston, November, p. 55-58; Yamasaki, Minoru, 1961, II: After Confederation, Toronto, Oxford McGill-Queen’s University Press. “A Humanist Tradition for America and its University Press, p. 455-471. See also: Berger, Relation to the Traditional Architecture of 29. McMinn : 22. Carl, 1966, “The True North Strong and Free,” Japan,” Zodiac, vol. 8, p. 142-143; Creighton, 30. Gowans, Alan, 1966, Building Canada: An in Peter Russell (ed.), Nationalism in Canada, Thomas, 1959, “The New Sensualism, I and II,” Architectural History of Canadian Life, Toronto, McGraw-Hill, p. 3-26. Progressive Architecture, vol. 40, September/ Toronto, Oxford University Press, p. 166 and 41. See: Myzelev, Alla, 2010, “Canadian October, p. 141-147 and 180-187; Hitchcock, 198. Prototypical architectural manifesta- Architecture and Nationalism: From Vernacular Henry Russell, 1951, “The International Style tions of this moment might include the 1953 to Deco,” The Brock Review, vol. 11, no. 1, Twenty Years After,” Architectural Record, national competition winning scheme for p. 28-42. vol. 110, August, p. 237-255; Rudolph, Paul, the National Gallery by Winnipeg’s Green 1959, “The Form and the City,” Canadian 42. Lears, T.J. Jackson, 1981, No Place of Grace: Blankstein Russell and the 1958 Canadian Architect, vol. 4, March, p. 49-67; Goldhagen Antimodernism and the Transformation of Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair. and Legault : 14; Goldhagen, Sarah Williams, American Culture, 1880-1920, New York, 2005, “Something to Talk About: Modernism, 31. Osborne : 81; Arthur, Eric, 1929, “Architecture Pantheon Books, p. xv. This same sense of Discourse, Style,” Journal of the Society of in Canada,” in Bertram Brooker (ed.), modern “rootlessness” is captured well in Architectural Historians, vol. 64, no. 2, p. 144- Yearbook of the Arts, Toronto, MacMillan Berman, Marshall, 1982, All That Is Solid Melts 167; Lears : xix and 63; Frampton, Kenneth, Company of Canada, p. 105-112. In contrast into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New 1983, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism,” to Michelangelo Sabatino’s statement that York, Simon and Schuster. Discussed in: Myers, Perspecta, vol. 20, p. 147-162. “Arthur chose not to exalt the machine age Fred R., 2001, “Around and About Modernity: aesthetic” and “did not celebrate the enginee- Some Comments on Themes of Primitivism and 47. Binning, B.C., 1950, “The Artist and the ring culture,” Arthur’s early statements argue Modernism,” in Jessup, Antimodernism and Architect,” RAIC Journal, September, p. 320- the opposite: “I believe it will take a thousand Artistic Experience…, op. cit., p. 13-25. Jessup, 321; Lasserre, Frederic, 1955, “Viewpoint,” years to develop a national style in Canada, Lynda, 2001, “Bushwhackers in the Gallery: RAIC Journal, August, quoted in: Bernstein, but I do see a light in the west over a grain Antimodernism and the Group of Seven,” in William and Ruth Cawker, 1981, Building elevator” and “there is something distinctively Jessup, id., p. 130-154. with Words, Toronto, Coach House Press, original about a grain elevator, but nothing p. 14. See also: Massey, Hart, 1951, “Half an 43. Brockelman, Thomas, 2003, “Lost in Place? Canadian about the Chateau Frontenac.” Architecture,” RAIC Journal, vol. 28, no. 9, On the Virtues and Vices of Edward Casey’s Sabatino, Michelangelo, 2001, “Eric Arthur: p. 257-261. Anti-Modernism,” Humanitas, vol. 16, no. 1, Practical Visions,” Journal of the Society for p. 36-55; Anderson, Benedict, 2001, “Staging 48. In 1962 Parkin twinned his argument that the Study of Architecture in Canada, vol. 26, Antimodernism in the Age of High Capitalist Canadian architecture represented an no. 1, p. 33-42. Nationalism,” in Jessup, Antimodernism and embrace of landscape with the case that the 32. Rochon : 34-35. Artistic Experience…, op. cit., p. 97-103. nation’s practices highlighted the importance of collective context and space. Parkin : 38. 33. Parkin : 38. 44. This lens has been considered particularly 49. Liscombe, Rhodri Windsor, 2015, “Modernist 34. Rosenblum, Robert, 1972, Modern Painting applicable to the analysis of the Group of Seven, who McKay reads as typical of a Architecture and Design in Canada and and the Northern Romantic Tradition, New the United States,” in Allana Lindgren and York, Harper Collins. “Laurentian” view (“Handicrafts and the Logic of ‘Commercial Antimodernism,’” : 117- Stephen Ross, The Modernist World, London, 35. Kalman : 811. 129), and who Jessup has identified as Routledge, p. 509-518. It was such desires that

JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016 63 JEFFREY THORSTEINSON > ANALYSIS | ANALYSE

undergird a number of “prefix” modernist Descriptions, London, T. Payne and Son, genres which expressed ambitions contrary p. 256, [https://archive.org/details/observa- to those perceived within the hegemonic tionsonmo00what], accessed August 31, 2016. International Style in the postwar years. See also: Price, Uvedale, 1796, Essays on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime 50. Brockelman : 47. and the Beautiful; and on the Use of Studying 51. Crossman : 137; Frampton, “Towards a Critical Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Regionalism…” : 27; Hay, William, 1853, Landscape, London, UK, J. Robson, p. 348, “Architecture for the Meridian of Canada,” [https://archive.org/details/essaysonpictures- The Anglo-American Magazine, vol. 2, 01priciala], accessed August 31, 2016; and p. 253-255. Oerlemans, Onno, 2002, Romanticism and the 52. Otero Pailos, Jorge, 2010, Architecture’s Materiality of Nature, Toronto, University of Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise Toronto Press. of the Postmodern, Minneapolis, University of 56. Collins, Peter, 1975, Changing Ideals in Modern Minnesota Press. Architecture, 1750-1950, Montreal-Kingston, 53. Wright, Janet, 1984, Architecture of the McGill-Queen’s University Press. Hitchcock Picturesque in Canada, Ottawa, National compares “Wright’s worship of nature” to Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Parks Canada. the general “harmony in the direct line of the While the picturesque involved formal aesthe- picturesque of the early Romantics,” calling tics, another focus was on natural landscape; “harmony, the very quality which the inco- the picturesque was proposed as a middle- herent and symbolic functionalism of the ground between the serenely beautiful and eclectic taste made impossible.” Hitchcock, the awe-inspiring sublime, a position invol- Henry Russell, 1929, Modern Architecture: ving the integration of the man-made and the Romanticism and Reintegration, New York, natural. Andrews, Malcolm, 1989, The Search Payson and Clarke Limited, p. 116; Conron, for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics John, 2000, American Picturesque, University and Tourism in Britain, Palo Alto, Stanford Park, Pennsylvania University Press, p. xxii. University Press, p. viii; Hussey, Christopher, 57. Dawn, Leslie, 2007, National Visions, National 1927, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in View, London, Putnam. Significantly, the the 1920s, Vancouver, University of British picturesque is a category of interpretation Columbia Press. as much as practice, a situation recalling the 58. Saul, John Ralston, 2008, A Fair Country: reading of modern Canadian architecture as Telling Truths About Canada, Toronto, Viking landscape-oriented. Canada, p. 103. 54. Macarthur, John, 2000, “Brutalism, Ugliness 59. Saler, Michael T., 2001, The Avant-Garde in and the Picturesque Object,” in Andrew Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and Leach and Emina Petrovic (ed.), Formulation the London Underground, Oxford, Oxford Fabrication – The Architecture of History: University Press, p. 6. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural 60. Goldhagen and Legault : 11. Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 61. Liscombe, Rhodri Windsor (ed.), 2011, Wellington, New Zealand, SAHANZ, Architecture and the Canadian Fabric, p. 259-266. See also: Vidler, Anthony, Vancouver, University of 2008, Histories of the Immediate Present: Press; Careless, J.M.S., 1969, “‘Limited Inventing Architectural Modernism, 1930- Identities’ in Canada,” Canadian Historical 1975, Cambridge, MIT Press. Notably, Hussey Review, vol. 50, no. 1, p. 1-10 [reprinted in has also described picturesque figures such Careless, J.M.S., 1990, Careless at Work: as Knight as prophets “of modernism” in Selected Canadian Historical Studies, Toronto, their taking the “first step towards abstract Dundurn Press, p. 281-291]. aesthetic values.” Hussey, Christopher, 1927, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View, London, UK, G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

55. Grignon, Marc, 2014, “Architecture and ‘Environmentality’ in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, vol. 39, no. 2, p. 65-77; Whately, Thomas, 1777, Observations on Modern Gardening, Illustrated by

64 JSSAC | JSÉAC 41 > No 2 > 2016