Architecture-Building & Construction

Toronto City Hall Toronto City Hall (1961-1965) was designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, who won an international competition. It features two curved towers of reinforced concrete and glass that enclose a saucer-shaped chamber where the city council meets.Peter Gridley/FPG International/PNI

The repetitive, uniform quality of mainstream modernism led some Canadian architects, as early as 1953, to search for a regionally based architecture that reflected local conditions of geography and climate. The lozenge-shaped B. C. Electric Building (1955-1957) in Vancouver by Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and the works of Ron Thom reflect the emergence of a regionalist sensibility rooted in modernism yet sensitive to the building’s site in choice of materials, shape, landscaping,... and color. Thom’s plan for Massey College (1960-1963) at the University of Toronto arranged brick and limestone buildings around a traditional campus quadrangle. The materials were chosen for their ability to age gracefully, and they integrate crafts such as ceramics, woodwork, and silverwork in their surface finish. Thom’s buildings for Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, reflect the glacial topography of the land on which they stand.

Arthur Erickson’s Canadian Embassy Arthur Erickson is one of Canada’s best-known modern architect’s, noted for his use of site and his innovative designs. Among his works is the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., shown here. Built of Canadian marble between 1983 and 1989, the building makes reference in its shapes to monuments and other buildings that are nearby.

The regionalist sensibility, especially the responsiveness to environment, reached a high point in the work of Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson. His modernist houses, such as the Gordon Smith house (1965) in Vancouver and imaginatively sited university buildings, brought him worldwide attention. Erickson’s design for Simon Fraser University (1963-1965) in Burnaby, British Columbia, included a quadrangle with a reflecting pool at its center. Openings on the ground floor of buildings surrounding the quadrangle frame views of the nearby mountains. His Museum of Anthropology (1973-1976) in Vancouver took as its starting point the post-and-beam forms of west coast Kwakiutl villages.

Canadian Museum of Civilization The Canadian Museum of Civilization or, in French, Musée canadien des civilisations, is one of the cultural centers of Hull. The museum was designed by Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal. Its curves suggest the late Ice Age landscape when the first human beings reached Canada.Ron Watts/First Light Stock

In Toronto, Finnish architect Viljo Revell won an international competition to design a new city hall. The success of his two curved towers of reinforced concrete and glass for the Toronto City Hall (1961-1965) introduced a wave of expressionist architecture—architecture with complex and unusual, often curvilinear, shapes. Expressionist churches include Montréal architect Roger D’Astous’s Notre-Dame-des-Champs (1962-1963) in Repentigny, Québec, and Alberta architect Etienne Gaboury’s Église du Précieux Sang (1967-1968) in Saint Boniface, Manitoba. Gaboury’s design features a spiraling double helix of wooden beams. Edmonton architect Douglas Cardinal incorporated geology in his curved buildings. Fossils are embedded in the limestone exterior of Cardinal’s Canadian Museum of Civilisation (1983-1989) in Hull, Québec, and the building’s shape echoes the landscape of the late Ice Age, when the first humans arrived in Canada.

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