Open AccessCanada's Urban History in Architecture, Part One
Author(s) -
Alan Gowans
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
urban history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1918-5138
pISSN - 0703-0428
DOI - 10.7202/1019034ar
Subject(s) - politics , architecture , sensibility , aesthetics , poetry , statement (logic) , sociology , history , media studies , political science , visual arts , law , art , literature
Architecture is politics in three dimensions." That is a useful principle to keep in mind when you walk around any town or city, or drive through the countryside in Canada. It means that the kind of buildings people put on a landscape do more than merely reflect prevailing political or social views or economic conditions. They also play a large part in shaping those political and social views. Through architecture, establishments make the most dramatic statement of things officially believed in and hoped for. Architecture requires too much money and time ever to be a private art, ever to represent personal musings about life or sensibility to environment. Paintings or poems may be produced in garrets with little or no resources or commitment to an audience, but never buildings. They are always involved in community life to some degree and if they are of any size, they may affect that life for centuries. Because of these relationships between it and society, architecture makes the most lasting statements about history that can ever be made — history made visible for those who know how to see, history speaking to those who know how to listen.