摘要：Canada is latest volume in the global survey of the history of modern architecture by Reaktion Books. From Brazil to Turkey, Canada joins a current list of ten titles that explore the architectural history of twentieth-century architecture, focussing in particular on the lifecycle of Modernism as it has been adopted, reinterpreted and/or rejected around the world. Here, my use of architectural history and architecture in the same sentence is not a redundancy but a clarification of what the reader will find in this book. It is not, as the series title states, “modern architectures in history” but rather an art history survey of prominent architectural works. “Architectures in history” implies the series considers the role architecture has played in shaping past human events. What we find instead is the reverse: a history of design as it has responded to different times as seen through the work of different architects. If this seems to be splitting hairs it is not because it goes to a fundamental question on the purpose of architectural history as an academic discipline (or as a type of book). On reading a book about historic buildings, should the reader come away having learned something new about history through the examination of built space, or should they come away the better informed about the narrower world of architectural practice; who designed which building when, who and what they were influenced by, and who they in turn influenced. Of course, there is no right answer. Different books serve different interests and different audiences. What the reader needs to know before reading Canada i s that, despite the subtitle, it is very much the latter, where the object is a history of architects not history through architects. For instance, this book of buildings is populated throughout with people, there are many names, but they are all architects. There is little or no mention of the people who used, occupied, or had their lives framed by the buildings under discussion. I cannot say these concerns amount to a criticism of Canada , or of the series from which it takes its lead. Rather, more that it (intentionally and proudly) occupies a specific niche that may not appeal to all.
