Substance over Spectacle presents the best and brightest architectural work in Canada in the last ten years, providing a representative sample of Canadian architectural practice since the early nineties, and demonstrating a specific Canadian sensibility that is unlike any architectural trend elsewhere in the world. The book also explores ssues of viability, sustainability, community, and utility as they relate to the Canadian architectural experience.

Included is the work of 25 architects from every area of the country, each represented by an installation of their own design and construction. In addition to photographs of the finished projects, Substance Over Spectacle also features images of models and architectural drawings, together with analytical/critical text demonstrating the architectural ideas embedded in the work.

Included are five essays on contemporary Canadian architecture, by some of Canada's leading thinkers on architecture: George Baird, Sherry McKay, Marco Polo, Georges Adamczyk, and Andrew Gruft.

Publication of the book coincided with an exhibition of the same name at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, in April 2005.

Substance Over Spectacle, the first national critical overview of Canadian architecture in some 18 years, offers fresh new perspectives on how our architecture defines us as we approach the first mid-decade of the new century.

Andrew Gruft is Professor Emeritus in the School of Architecture at UBC, and one of the coordinators of the architectural lecture series of the Vancouver League. His field of interest and expertise has always been contemporary architecture and urban design, with a specific focus on Canada, the Americas and Europe. In 1986 he curated "A Measure of Consensus," an exhibition that examined the state of Canadian architecture. Since then, he has curated and written about contemporary Canadian architecture for galleries and museums around the world.

Andrew Gruft's profile page

There's so much here to enjoy over a Sunday morning cup of coffee. For instance, who would think a building with as boring a name as the Municipal Water Treatment Centre in Calgary could be so poetic?
-The Victoria Times Colonist

Times Colonist

A groundbreaking book.
-The Calgary Herald

Calgary Herald

...the book advocates meaning and depth in Canada's best buildings--particularly in our media-saturated culture that tends to celebrate the spectacular.
-Canadian Architect

Cdn. Archtitect

...this visually luscious book.
-Quill & Quire

Quill & Quire

Substance over Spectacle includes a wide-ranging suite of essays by Andrew Gruft and architects George Baird, Sherry McKay, Georges Adamczyk, and Marco Polo.... The [architectural] works demonstrate the sharply regional nature of Canada and the contrasts between urban and rural, east and west, personal and institutional.
-University of Toronto Quarterly

University of Toronto Quarterly