The Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (SSAC) will be hosting in 45th annual conference in Halifax next year. Taking place from May 28-31, the conference will use Halifax’s architectural heritage as a springboard for discourse, with a call for session proposals now underway.
The Halifax Central Library plays a role in the Society for Study of Architecture discourse. Photo by Citobun via Wikimedia Commons.
Halifax?s statue of Edward Cornwallis is now gone, removed by the city in the January 2018, yet the dust of its removal has not fully settled. Setting Cornwallis? brutal policies towards the Mi?kmaq against arguments against rewriting history and repudiating the city?s ?true? heritage, the public debate elides the facts of the statue itself. The bronze Cornwallis installed in 1931 (re)cast this previously ignored and slightly embarrassing 18th-century colonizer as a ?founding hero,? asserting the ?Britishness? of Halifax at a time of immigration and cultural change. A short walk from Cornwallis Square, the new Halifax Central Library generated similar public controversy. The old Memorial Library, built in 1951 as a war memorial in a military town, was overcrowded and decaying, but also well-beloved. Architects from Denmark were selected over a self-proclaimed ?local architect,? and furnished an aggressively modern building to a city that prides itself on its premodern character. Yet thousands lined up on opening day in December 2014, marvelling at the in...