Two of the most astonishing installations at the current Venice Biennale are by Canadian architects who most Canadian architects have never heard of.  Born and educated in Canada, and with only the rare evidence of a round British vowel to give away spending almost their entire professional careers there, ‘Anglo-Canoids’ Alison Brooks and Adam Caruso are amongst the highest-regarded architects of their generation in the United Kingdom. Both are in their fifties, and just now arriving at a scale and range of commissions commiserate with their talents.  More on their head-turning Venice creations in a moment, but first a bit of context, so their achievements can be understood.
Meet the Anglo-Canoids
What is more, these two are but the tip of the iceberg of Canadians of all ages working in British offices, and increasingly, opening their own practices. There is a grand tradition of this?pioneer London modernist Welles Coates was Vancouver-trained (degrees in both arts and engineering, as UBC had no architecture school before WW II), but with the 1934 Isokon housing block in Hampstead and subsequently, he was amongst the first to build in the full-blown International Style in Britain.  Without doubt, Welles Coates is the first fully Modernist architect ever to hold a Canadian passport, with Ernest Cormier of Montreal and John Lyle of Toronto being more timid and transitional in their constructions, despite their own early 20th century work experience in London, P...