Modes of Modernizing: Modernist Design BY RHODRI WINDSOR 60 SSAC BULLETIN 19:3 The Acquisition of in Canada LISCOMBE The means by wh ich Canadian- and indeed inter­ Figure 19. Nathan Nemetz residence, Va ncouver, designed in 1948 by John Porter and Catherine Chard national-architects acquired an understanding of Wisnicki. (Post and Beam [Vancouver: B.C. Lumber Assn., 1960], cover) Modernist design is more assumed than researched ., The issue is highly complex since it embraces a range of factors from the educational policy or educative competence of faculty in the schools of architecture, to the intellectual, technical, and creative competence of the individual students, to the disparate nature of Modernist theory and practice. However, the main lines of that process can be summarized by reference to the self-directed learning and institutional training under­ taken by those Canadian architects who began practice on the West Coast during the decade follow­ ing the Second World War. The choice of British Columbia, and especially Vancouver, as the geographical focus - and to a lesser extent of residential design as the typological focus- is determined by the speedier acceptance of Modernist values there than elsewhere in Canada. 2 This resulted from the economy and population's considerable expansion after 1946, and from the fact that for many, architects included, British Columbia afforded a more habitable climate and more liberal cultural environment in which to experiment with progressive design principles demonstrably relevant to a "baby-boom" society.3 The recounted experiences of members of that generation of architects, a brief analysis of their work, and an investigation of related documentary fo r John Bland material form the basis of this interim study.4 19:3 SSAC BULLETIN 61 Figure 1 (above). The B.C. Research Council Building, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, designed by C.J. Thompson with C. E. Pratt and R.AD. Berwick, 1947. (R. Windsor Liscombe, 1994) Figure 2 (below). The Hebb Physics Mdition, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, designed by Richard Archambault under the supervision of Roy Jessiman, 1956. (R. Windsor Liscombe, 1994) hese sources yield interesting results that challenge aspects of the conventional inter­ T:pretation of Western Canadian and Modernist architectural history. Firstly, West Coast Modernism developed less from regional imperatives than from the local application of essen­ tially international ideas and imagery during what might be termed the "stoical phase" of Modernism in British Columbia, between demobilization and the Vancouver recession of 1960-61. That is not to undervalue either the primary influence of site and climate or the notable talents of native architects, exemplified by naming but five from the period: Bill Birmingham, C.E. " Ned" Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson, and Barry Downs. Rather, it is to state that most architects of that generation appreciated the Modernist interest in accommodating regional and local cultural factors, and believed that the tenets of international Modernism offered a valid means to express personal and even national aspirations, as was the case in contemporary Canadian abstract art.5 Secondly, the comprehension of Modernism by architectural faculty and students depended as much upon visual as theoretical material. In the same manner, Modernist theory was less a homogeneously defined set of principles than a diverse body of part-ethical and part-aesthetic objectives given renewed relevance by post-war Reconstruction.6 Thirdly, illustrations of European and American Modernist design in professional and other journals 62 SSAC BULLETIN 19:3 were cited by designers as having influenced them. This not only underscores the continuing Figure 3 (left). The van Nelle coffee, tea, and tobacco significance of the published image in the currency of architectural practice, but anticipates factory at Rotterdam, designed by Brinkman and van the necessary concerns of B.C. architects with geographical setting and the use of local der Vlugt, 1928-30. (The International Style: materials, especially wood. Fourthly, while the contribution of locally-born and -trained ar­ Architecture since 1922 [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932]). chitects was very substantial, the development of West Coast Modernism depended sig­ nificantly upon the immigration of architects and ideas inspired by the transatlantic Figure 4 (right). The Fagus shoe-last factory at Alfeld, Modernist movement; British Columbia artist B.C. Binning, for example, became a leading designed byGropius and Meyer, 1911. (Art in proponent of Modernism and built his pioneering West Coast Modern house (1940) after America, January/February 1979). studying with Ozenfant and being enthused by Modernist British and European design_? Two buildings erected on the fast-growing campus of the University of British Columbia manifest the broad acceptance of the abstract functionalist values at the core of early 20th-century Modernism: the B.C. Research Council Building, begun in 1947 to the designs of C.J. Thompson (until the early 1940s a staunchly Arts-and-Crafts-cum-Gothicist), assisted by C.E. Pratt and R.A.D. Berwick (figure I); and the Hebb Physics Addition of 1956 by Richard Archambault, working under the supervision of Roy Jessiman as Thompson, Ber­ wick and Pratt's partner in charge of the university's architecture (figure 2). The exposed rein­ forced concrete structure and equally austerely functional brick and steel frame window infill of the B.C. Research Council Building correspond with the stoical efficiency of between-the­ wars Dutch Modernism, epitomized by Brinkman and van der Vlugt's widely-illustrated van Nelle coffee, tea, and tobacco factory at Rotterdam (1928-30) (figure 3). Similarly, the Hebb Physics Addition clearly reveals that Archambault and Jessiman had studied such canonic works as Gropius and Meyer's Fagus shoe-last factory at Alfeld (1911) and had com­ prehended the new concepts of design it embodied (figure 4). It is the inspiration, not the im­ position, of Modernist imagery and associated ideology that is readily apparent in these Canadian university buildings. The adaptive nature of such West Coast architecture reflects the relatively small number of Canadian Modernists who, until the mid-1950s, had actually travelled to the European or North American sources. Among those who had was Archambault. Funded by the progressively inclined British Pilkington Glass Company, he went to study in Britain and on the continent in 1956. There had been a few others before the war, notably during the 1930s: University of Toronto School of Architecture graduates Fred Lasserre (graduated ·1934) and J.B. Parkin (graduated 1935), who worked in Britain; Peter Thornton, a native of Western Canada, who was trained at the Architectural Association in London from 1934 to 1938. Later exceptions included Jessiman and John Porter, on war service, and Arthur Erick­ son, intent upon visiting the renowned architecture of the 1951 Festival of Britain in London but redirected to unlearning some of the Modernist dogma on a two-year tour of the Mediter­ ranean basin.8 A majority of architects had not ventured abroad; indeed, they had attended ar­ chitectural schools with fundamentally Beaux-Arts typed programmes. Harold Semmens and Douglas Simpson, the acknowledged leaders of advanced Modernism in Vancouver through the early 1950s, had graduated just before the outbreak of war from the University of Manitoba, when it was under the direction of the conservatively-inclined Milton Osborne and John Russell (himself a graduate of the Beaux-Arts era at M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass­ achusetts). The annual curricula printed in the university calendars through the 1930s dis­ close no real alteration to accommodate Modernist thought or process.9 Yet, without benefit of specific Modernist education or exposure, Semmens and Simpson were to be responsible for such early icons of Vancouver Modernism as the adeptly synthesized Miesian/Corbusian Marwell Office Building (1950-51), recipient of a 1952 Massey Gold Medal and signal of the acknowledged pre-eminence of B.C. Modernism in the post-war decade (figure 5). tO 19:3 SSAC BULLETIN 63 Figure 5 (above). Interior view ol the Marwe/1 Office Building, Vancouver; Semmens and Simpson, architects, 1950-51. (Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (JRAIC)35, no. 4 [April1958]: 136) Figure 6 (below). The Buchanan Building, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1955-57; loltan Kiss, project architect, under the supervision of Roy Jessiman ol Thompson, Berwick and Pratt. (U.B.C. Special Collections) Clearly, Semmens and Simpson had attained beyond the confines of academe a thorough understanding of Modernist principles fully as accomplished as that of the Hun­ garian-born and -trained Zoltan Kiss, who was project architect at Thompson, Berwick and Pratt under Jessiman for the more derivative Miesian Buchanan Building at U_B.C. (1955- 57) (figure 6)- It was designed nearly six years after Kiss had emigrated from Hungary (and three years after joining Sharp & Thompson, Berwick, Pratt, that nursery of Vancouver Modernism), where he trained at the Bauhaus-influenced Technical University of Budapest (following Peter Kaffka, who also emigrated to Vancouver), and, thereby, was more directly aware of the extensive Modernist design in central Europe_ However, the correspondence between post-war Vancouver and prewar European Modernist design is, as indicated