Up North

The legacy of Canadian architecture grows out of the landscape, a landscape that is mythic in its scale and power. Up north, architecture rarely competes with the awe-inspiring forces of nature. It digs into the side of a hill or a mountain, or it rises up to match the temper of the land. In Canada, there is an unabashed intimacy between architecture and landscape.How do award-winning Canadian architects continue to distinguish themselves in the world`s hyper-market of design? By doing what theyve been doing since the 1940s: making meaningful, authentic sense of modernism.

The award-winning architecture that Canadians are producing today is not a concoction brewed up to suit the globalized aesthetic of design. It belongs to a legacy of intelligence in architecture that began on the West Coast: human-scaled, finely crafted architecture that heightened the sense of place. Over the past several decades, the best Canadian architects have developed a modern design language that never abandoned a strong sense of place. Original analysis and insights are drawn from the author`s extensive experience as the national architecture critic and her in-depth interviews with the gurus of Canadian architecture: Frank Gehry, Eberhard Zeidler, Raymond Moriyama, as well as the younger superstars such as Bruce Kuwabara, the Patkaus and Shim-Sutcliffe Architects.