Steven Mannell, NSAA, FRAIC, is founding Director of Dalhousie University's international award-winning College of Sustainability, and led the College from 2008 to 2020. He is a practicing architect and Professor of Architecture. His research includes waterworks architecture and engineering, the conservation of modern built heritage, lightweight construction techniques, and the late 20th century emergence of “ecological” architecture. He is curator and author of Atlantic Modern: The Architecture of the Atlantic Provinces 1950-2000 (2001) and Living Lightly on the Earth: Building an Ark for Prince Edward Island 1974-76 (2016). His recent chapter “Environmental Architecture” (in Lam & Livesay, Canadian Modern Architecture, 2019) examines the origins, development, and potentials of sustainable built environments in Canada. He is currently expanding this study with a focus on the intersections of design and social movements.
Sessions in which Prof. Steven Mannell participates
Thursday 26 May, 2022
The construction fence along University Avenue is down, restoring to view to the familiarly strange forms of the Dalhousie Arts Centre. Never quite in harmony with Halifax architectural proprieties, the building’s central place in the city’s cultural life has fostered an uneasy co- existence between the radicalism of its forms and the nostalgic impulse of the society it serves. Just how did such an assemblage concrete forms come to be? Arguably Canada’s only authentic “Metabolist” building...
Sessions in which Prof. Steven Mannell attends
Wednesday 25 May, 2022
We propose a rich and colorful inaugural evening, in a mythical place: Dawson Hall, behind St James United Church (1887-1889, Alexander Francis Dunlop, arch.), known as the "Montreal Methodist Cathedral" - with 2000 seats, it was the largest Methodist church in Canada when it was built. Designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996, it escaped demolition in 1980 when it was classified as a historic monument, and then escaped extinction thanks to an ambitious restoration project, in...
Friday 27 May, 2022
Walking tour of the working-class housing and churches of Saint-Pierre-Apôtre and Sainte-Brigide-de-Kildare (now the Sainte-Brigide Cultural and Community Centre) in the south-central district of Montreal.The tour will be guided by Luc Noppen.A departure (by foot) will be organized from the conference site; the tour itself will begin at 5:00 pm at the Beaudry metro station (a metro station of Berri-UQAM, site of the conference).
Saturday 28 May, 2022
Bus tour of the Soulanges Canal and its facilities (1899-1959), currently undergoing a major enhancement project. The first stop will be at the west entrance of the canal, the Coteau-Landing (Les Coteaux) entrance lock; from there, we will go to lock no. 4 and to the old Cedars hydroelectric power station (called "Petit Pouvoir"), classified as a historic monument since 1984 by the Quebec government, then to Pointe-des-Cascades where the spectacular locks no. 1, 2 and 3 are located. The vi...
We offer a unique experience for the closing dinner of this conference in Montreal, in the former U.S. pavilion of Expo'67 - the most popular of the exhibition, with 5.3 million visitors: the "geodesic dome" designed by architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) with the collaboration of Shoji Sadao. The self-supporting steel honeycomb structure, covered with a polymer skin, was burned down in 1976 and redeveloped in the 1990s, according to the plans of architect Éric Gauthier, into an envir...