Reside: Contemporary West Coast Houses
“Decades after gaining international recognition through the work of practitioners such as Barry Downs, Arthur Erickson, and Ron Thom, the West Coast Modern style remains widely celebrated and highly influential for residential architects in British Columbia and beyond, even as its expressions evolve and adapt to contemporary contexts. What are the contours of its legacy today—and has a new regional style emerged?
To explore these questions, Clinton Cuddington, co-principal of Measured Architecture, invited dozens of B.C.-based architects to share residential projects that exemplify their design process. Their responses range from palatial mountain chalets to cabins sitting lightly in the forest to oceanfront retreats to sensitive urban renovations. Each house is presented through full-colour photos by professional photographers including Andrew Latreille and Ema Peter, and accompanied by short essays by curator and critic Michael Prokopow that draw on visits to each house and interviews with the architects to elucidate the many aesthetic and programmatic accomplishments on display. The houses are grouped by typology within Mountain, Forest, Shore, and City sections, and followed by profiles of each firm with photos of additional work.
As Prokopow details in an incisive essay, each house is necessarily also a response to the conditions of its creation, notably its site—locations include the Sea-to-Sky Region, Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, Southern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the West Kootenays—as well as its social and cultural context, and so is revealing of modern ideas about home and family, leisure and vocation, ecological concerns and communion with nature on Canada’s West Coast.
With thoughtful, deeply informed prose and over 300 captivating photos, Reside is an absorbing and inspiring tour of some of the most exceptional houses in the country, and a portrait of how the unique character of the region is expressed in built form.” – Figure 1 Publishing
About the Author
Dr. Michael J. Prokopow is a cultural historian and curator whose areas of expertise include architecture and design, material and visual culture, and critical and postcolonial theory. His many publications include, most recently, Hurvin Anderson (2021) and Smith House II for UBC SALA West Coast Modern House series (2012). Between 2004 and 2008, he was curator of the Design Exchange, Canada’s only museum of twentieth-century industrial design. In 2011, he curated an exhibition on the work of architect and theorist George Baird at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and in 2016 he co-curated the touring exhibition True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada. He sits on the boards of the Arthur Erickson Foundation, the Canadian Society for the Decorative Arts, and Studio Magazine, and holds a PhD from Harvard University. Born and raised in Victoria, BC, he now divides his time between London, UK, and Toronto, where he is a faculty member at OCAD University.
Reside: Contemporary West Coast Houses
By Michael Prokopow
Figure 1 Publishing
Publish Date: September 2024
