This book focuses on what is arguably the first significant piece of
modern residential architecture in Western Canada: The BC Binning House.
Still standing in West Vancouver as a National Historic Site, the house
has influenced generations of architects and continues to do so until
today. The structure is often thought to be the beginning of Canada's
West Coast Modernism movement as it represents both the arrival of
Modernist design principles and their inflection with local interests
and conditions. But the house is much more than an important moment in
the history of regional architecture, it manifests a remarkable set of
Binning's preoccupations with geometry, optics, and perception. Beyond
his direct engagement with architecture, Binning is a key figure in
Canadian art history who is renowned for his painting and drawing. His
paintings and drawings are held in the collections of major institutions
including the National Gallery of Art. The confluence of his thinking
about art and his ideas on buildings amount to modest but breathtaking
structure.