Modern
Movement Architecture in BC
Community Partners:
DOCOMOMO.BC Working Party, Vancouver, BC
Project Directors:
Marco D'Agostini, DOCOMOMO.BC Working Party
Email: marco_dagostini@city.vancouver.bc.ca
Dr. Christopher Thomas, Department of History in Art, University
of Victoria
Email: cthomas@finearts.uvic.ca
Student Researchers:
Directed Studies: Ayla Lepine, History in Art
HA 468: Heather Gregg, Mary Laycock, Judith Penner and Tusa Shea
HA 490: Alana Brookes and Beth Macdonald
Young Canada Works: Ayla Lepine, History in Art; Graham Winterbottom,
Geography
All over the world, the architectural heritage of postwar Modernism
is being re-evaluated and key surviving examples preserved. To
that end, in the late 1980s, the organization DOCOMOMO (standing
for "Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement") was
created in Holland and has since expanded to over forty countries,
worldwide. Canada has three chapters, and the CURA project is
a partnership with DOCOMOMO-BC to document, on standardized forms
and also as a CD-ROM, outstanding examples of postwar Modernism
in the province. The task of the University faculty and student
researchers is to research and document eight structures or ensembles
(including one landscape) on Vancouver Island -- Pearson College,
Metchosin; the Robert Filberg house, Comox; Home Lumber Company
headquarters, Victoria; Port Alberni Municipal Hall; the "Trend
Home", Richmond Street, Victoria; Abkhazi Rhododendron Garden,
Fairfield Road, Victoria; Central Junior High School, Victoria;
and the C.N.I.B. building, Victoria. Together, these represent
a cross-section of the finest progressive, even visionary, design
of the period after World War Two, when Victoria and the Island
underwent rapid growth. The project represents an extension of
the heritage-preservation work and concern for which Victoria
is known as a pioneer, nationwide.
As a result of a class research-project in fall 2003 of a postwar
subdivision in Victoria called Topaz Heights, an exhibition on
it and, more generally, on postwar suburbanization is tentatively
planned for fall 2003 at the University's Maltwood Museum &
Art Gallery. The show is being planned by two undergraduate students,
Beth Macdonald and Alana Brookes, on a directed-study basis, under
the supervision of museum staff. The planned exhibit focusing
on themes of family-life, automobility, and modern architecture
and design is viewed as a precursor to a larger exhibit, to be
held in early 2005 in the same venue, on a wider variety of issues
raised by modern architecture and urbanism.
