Located in rural Saskatchewan, Clifford Wiens’ Silton Chapel features a dramatically cantilevered roof, supported by tension rods at each corner. (Photo: Karl Hinrichs, courtesy of Clifford Wiens. Reprinted from Canadian Architect, April 2006)
It?s a story that is playing out again and again across Canada, where churches have lost their congregations and are struggling to deal with maintenance. Except this chapel is different: instead of Gothic or Romanesque revival architecture in stone and brick, it is a Modernist masterpiece that was recognized by a Massey Medal in 1970. The ?most primeval piece of land architecture in Canada? is how Lisa Rochon described it in her 2008 book Up North: Where Canada?s Architecture Meets the Land.
Recently, I was asked a question that completely stumped me. It was to comment on the topic of modern heritage in Canada and the progress of its acceptance with the heritage community and the public. Despite a 2005 Trent University symposium entitled ?Conserving the Modern in Canada? and the completion of a federal/provincial/territorial partnership known as the Historic Places Initiative in 2010, buildings from the 1950s to 1970s continue to be lost. Little positive has happened. (Notable exceptions are the work of Docomomo Quebec and the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation.) These modern heritage buildings represent a truly lost art, from a time when relatively ordinary commissions could receive the design attention of an architect such as Wi...