FOREWORD

“The tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Architecture is the visual soundtrack to our lives; we live our lives within its matrix. The buildings that surround us produce an emotional response which is usually unconscious. Architecture expresses the values of its age more clearly and concretely than any historian’s analysis. Yet, surprisingly, most people do not really look at architecture. They seldom know how to look or what they are looking at; and they have been conditioned by contemporary society not to look, and not to see.

As an architectural photographer I have spent a large part of my life looking at buildings, and I love doing so. Decades of documenting architecture has allowed me to observe the progression of styles and building materials. My work has given me a unique perspective on the transformations and origins of architecture in Vancouver. Over the years, people from all walks of life have engaged me in discussion about buildings that I have been photographing, and their insights into architecture were often valuable. While visibly engaged and excited by architecture, they were frequently unable to articulate their valuable insights. By providing such people with a general knowledge of architectural history and terminology, I hope to stimulate debate and discussion.

Why do Vancouver’s buildings look the way they do? The answer to this question includes a study of architectural style itself... and by extension, of human nature. The appearance of our buildings is governed more by our essential beliefs than by building materials and engineering principles. In examining Vancouver’s buildings, I will present a history of the cultures and ideas that have formed the city’s many styles. I will introduce the individuals whose design ideas made buildings look the way they do, and examine the social conditions and philosophies that motivated them. I will give particular focus to the great architects of history and how their ideas contributed to Vancouver architecture by informing and conditioning the vision of local architects.

In this book I am contextualizing Vancouver architecture within the categories and terminology of international art history, and relating individual buildings to the social history of their era. I will define the genesis of each pertinent style, and the modifications that the Vancouver version of it has brought. I will give particular focus to the Gothic and Classical metastyles, whose influence is pivotal in the architecture of the western world in general, and I will also focus on the International Modernist style – the society of its Central European origins, the handful of architects whose ideas transmitted the International style to Vancouver, and why Vancouver was so particularly open to importing the style.

Much of this information is traditionally cloaked in obscure professional nomenclature. To make it accessible to the intelligent layman, I will attempt to avoid jargon that obfuscates the subject and further insulates those who produce and develop buildings from those who work and live in them. For the sake of reference, I will employ the conventional approach of categorizing architecture by style, school, and movement in a roughly linear chronology.

I will also attempt something more. I believe that the direct cause-and-effect model, in which static historical facts lead to architectural styles and movements, is secondary to overall patterns in the nature of human societies. In the life of an individual, major life choices are usually the result of many circumstances and relationships rather than single causes. So it is with architectural style. It is the interrelationship of social trends and historical circumstances which gives rise to the adoption or rejection of a particular architectural style by a particular society. No single style or building can be truly understood except in relation to the whole: by contextualizing architecture within the social history that it reflects, and by seeing social history as a product of our essential human nature.

Just as the religious beliefs of parents are pivotal in the life decisions made by their progeny, most architecture is belief written in stone, wood, and metal. The elements that shape architecture are a product of values that are religious in the case of the vast majority, and philosophical in the case of an elite few.

By focusing on the genesis and historic progression of a couple of pivotal schools I hope to delineate a deeper pattern in the oscillation of architectural styles. This exploration will include people and events which are seemingly tangential to the narrative. This is not only to provide a social context for the times from which the styles emerged, but to engage the contemporary reader with salacious and entertaining comments.

Architecture is the very essence of a city. I believe it is the duty of city dwellers to look at the buildings around them: to look long and often, to look with the heart, to look with the mind, and to critically analyze what their eyes are seeing. Historical and structural facts are of great use and can be learned, but the experience of looking is yours. It should be educated, but not mediated. Look with your own eyes. Educate them, train them, then trust them. Above all go look at buildings. Stop and see the city around you and feel its effect on you the way you might stop and listen closely to the lyrics of a song you’ve heard a thousand times. What song does this city sing to you?

The history written in our architecture is a history of ideas: a history of belief, tradition, empire, and ideology. If we look closely at our city’s changing shape we can see the history of the present. For those who look, and would like to know why Vancouver’s buildings look the way they do, I offer this book.

[Next post: The Dominion Building]