Building/Art

James A. Love is a professor architecture and associate dean (Research
and Outreach) in the Faculty of Environmental Design and an adjunct
professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Calgary. His
latest publication is the Illuminating Enginee

Andrew King is the 2003 winner of the Canada Council’s Rome Prize in
Architecture, one of the most distinguished awards in Canadian
architecture. Co-editors Jocelyn Belisle and Lawrence Eisler are
designers, and, respectively, an alumna and a sessional instructor of
environmental design at the University of Calgary. Ten essays by the
editors and architectural writers, including George Baird, Marco Polo,
and Stephanie White, flow through photographs of numerous contemporary
architectural projects. Building/Art is, visually, a beautifully
composed book that bemoans the state of contemporary cities as shaped by
the automobile and commerce. Ironically, the selected projects are
embedded in the urban fabric that is derided in the essays.

It would have been enlightening if the contributors had included a
visualization of the urban environment to which they feel Canadian
society should aspire, as have the visionary architects of the past,
from the proponents of the city beautiful to Archigram. It would also be
more helpful to present a program to reach this vision than a
description of the well-known current condition.