Exploring Vancouver: The Essential Architectural Guide

Vancouver’s streetscapes have changed drastically in recent years. New buildings representing current architectural trends are mixing with and often replacing those of earlier eras and tastes. Exploring Vancouver invites the reader to experience the city’s continually evolving landscape in a readable, yet authoritative, guide.

Robin Ward, Ron Phillips, and Harold Kalman present the most comprehensive selection ever published of Vancouver’s architecture -- modest and grand, historic and modern, attractive and not-so-attractive. Most of the entries were chosen for architectural reasons, but buildings of particular cultural, historical, or social significance are also included.

In lively prose, the authors describe the style and tell the history of each building. They include the full range of well-known Vancouver landmarks from early Gastown and hidden Chinatown treasures to the Marine Building and many noteworthy examples of the extensive urban development of the past fifteen years.

Features:

- Official guidebook of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia

- Completely rewritten and redesigned

- Over 600 new photographs by Robin Ward

- Covers neighbourhoods in Vancouver and the North Shore

- Clearly marked maps of each area for walking or driving

- 534 illustrated entries representing old and new architecture

- Descriptions combine architectural, historical, and social commentary

- Illustrated guide to architectural styles

- Glossary of architectural terms

- Buildings and architects index

Robin Ward is an artist, designer, and architectural critic. He is the author of Robin Ward’s Vancouver and contributes a popular column on architectural heritage to the Vancouver Sun. Ron Phillips is an urban geographer, bookseller, and freelance writer. Harold Kalman is an architectural historian and a principal of Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Limited. He was the author of the first two editions of Exploring Vancouver.