Canadian Modernity: Architecture, Landscape, Urbanism and National Identity

Canadian Homes and Gardens, “How to assemble the ‘help-less’ house’” February 1945

As a founding member of the Bureau of Architecture in Urbanism in 1987, with Brigitte Shim, Detelf Mertins, Marc Baraness and Ruth Cawker, George Thomas Kapelos was instrumental in drawing attention to the value of Toronto’s modern heritage.  "Toronto Modern" (2002) makes a case for the preservation of this undervalued architectural resource.  In “The Small House in Print” (JSSAC 34:1 33-60) and the paper “John Caulfield Smith: Profile of an architect as writer, editor and advocate” (SSAC, Lunenburg NS, 2010) Kapelos has explored the role of print media in the dissemination of modernism in Canada in the 1940s and 1950s.

The theme of the modern landscape and national identity was explored in the exhibition “Interpretations of Nature” (McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1993) and developed in subsequent teaching and critical writing including “Nature and the Inquisitive Lens” (1995) and “The Modern Landscape: Vimy and Gréber” (SSAC, Yellowknife NWT, 2008).

In addition to this Kapelos has been an architectural critic for "The Canadian Architect" and "Competitions Magazine".