Дэвид Стоук0.0 Arthur Erickson, Canada's pre-eminent philosopher architect, was renowned internationally for his innovative approach to landscape, his genius for spatial composition, and his epic vision of architecture for people. Among his most celebrated large-scale works are three that helped to define Vancouver's urban landscape: Simon Fraser University, on Burnaby Mountain; the Robson Square complex at the heart of the city; and the exquisite Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Travel was key to Erickson's creative process; floating high above the clouds on extended airline flights, he made preliminary drawings on vellum with his fine-point black felt-tip pen, designing influential works not only for other parts of Canada-including Toronto's widely admired Roy Thomson Hall--but for sites in the U.S., Britain, and the Middle and Far East. Erickson worked chiefly in concrete, which he called the marble of our times, and wherever they appear, his buildings move the spirit with their poetic freshness and their mission to inspire. But he was also a controversial figure, more than once attracting the ire of his fellow architects, and his professional achievements were tarnished by the excesses of a complicated personal life that resulted in a series of tawdry bankruptcies. In a fall from grace that recalls a Greek tragedy, Canada's great architect-a handsome, elegant man who lived like a millionaire and counted among his close friends Pierre Trudeau and Elizabeth Taylor-eventually became homeless and penniless.
This first full biography of Erickson, who died in 2009 at the age of eighty-four, traces the architect's life from its modest origins to his emergence on the world stage. Author David Stouck, acclaimed for his earlier biographies of Ethel Wilson and Sinclair Ross, demonstrates here once again why his work has been praised as imaginative, incisive and compelling. Grounded in interviews with Erickson and his family, friends and clients, as well as the resources of extensive public archives, TITLE is both an intimate portrait of the man and a stirring account of how Erickson made his buildings work. Beautifully written and superbly researched, it is also a provocative look at the phenomenon of cultural heroes and the nature of what we call genius.
Джеймс Бернард Маккиннон0.0 From one of Canada's most exciting writers and ecological thinkers, a book that will change the way we see nature and show that in restoring the living world, we are also restoring ourselves.
The Once and Future World began in the moment J.B. MacKinnon realized the grassland he grew up on was not the pristine wilderness he had always believed it to be. Instead, his home prairie was the outcome of a long history of transformation, from the disappearance of the grizzly bear to the introduction of cattle. What remains today is an illusion of the wild--an illusion that has in many ways created our world.
In 3 beautifully drawn parts, MacKinnon revisits a globe exuberant with life, where lions roam North America and 20 times more whales swim in the sea. He traces how humans destroyed that reality, out of rapaciousness, yes, but also through a great forgetting. Finally, he calls for an "age of restoration," not only to revisit that richer and more awe-filled world, but to reconnect with our truest human nature. MacKinnon never fails to remind us that nature is a menagerie of marvels. Here are fish that pass down the wisdom of elders, landscapes still shaped by "ecological ghosts," a tortoise that is slowly remaking prehistory. "It remains a beautiful world," MacKinnon writes, "and it is its beauty, not its emptiness, that should inspire us to seek more nature in our lives."
