Binning House: UBC SALA | West Coast Modern Series

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.