Clifford Wiens

Clifford Donald Wiens was a Canadian architect, designer, and author.[1]

Clifford Wiens

FRAIC RCA
Born(1926-04-27)27 April 1926
Glen Kerr area, Saskatchewan
Died25 January 2020(2020-01-25) (aged 93)
Vancouver, British Columbia
NationalityCanadian
Alma materRhode Island School of Design[note 1]
OccupationArchitect, designer, author
Spouse(s)Patricia Elizabeth Leigh (1956)
ChildrenMieka Tomilin • Robin Poitras • Inga Wiens • Susan Wright • Nathan Wiens • Lisa McNeil
Awards
Buildings
Projects

The first two-thirds of his professional career spanned forty years, a diverse body of architectural work found throughout Saskatchewan including designs for schools and hospitals, chapels and churches, motel and apartment buildings, private residences, buildings for corporations and health spas, dairy creameries in Regina and Saskatoon, and a Trans-Canada Highway campground.[1] He completed over one hundred projects.[2]

During the early phase of his career in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by his relationship with the group of abstract painters known as the Regina Five as well as his own background in industrial design, Wiens actively sought out new ideas and innovations in architecture, interested in developing a style responsive to the prairie landscape and history, developing a reputation for "inventive" architectural and structural details and "simple but strong forms".[2]

Wiens achieved his greatest prominence after Expo 67,[3] winning three Massey Award medals,[4] Canada's top award for architecture, more than any other Saskatchewan architect,[3] and two National Design Council of Canada Awards.[5] Wiens is one of the most nationally and internationally recognized designers from Saskatchewan.

The body of work reflects both corporate modern architecture and a broader expressionist movement with a distinctive approach to structure and form, an experimental International Style, but with "an expressive formal aesthetic and a respectful sensitivity to context and the surrounding landscape."[2] Despite being recognized as one of one of Canada's best architects,[1][2] some of Wiens' projects are in need of restoration and protection as they are slowly declining into disrepair.[2]

After retirement, Wiens wrote and published several books, initially professional and personal memoirs.[1]

Early life
Growing up on a Saskatchewan farm has been the foundation of my architectural education.

Clifford Wiens[6]

Clifford Wiens was born on 27 April 1926 to a Mennonite farming family,[1][2] near Glen Kerr, Saskatchewan[3] (northwest of Swift Current)[7] in the "grain belt" west of Regina, his Mennonite family putting a strong emphasis on self-reliance; while growing up he developed the wide range of wood frame construction, metalworking and mechanical skills needed for the operation of their farm.[3]

His understanding of the material world wasn't something that was academic... Form and function were a reality, and they had to do with survival.

Robin Poitras[6]

As a boy in the 1930s, he would build "cities" of mud and earth,[7] and helped his father construct chicken houses and miles of barbed-wire fence, and, wandering on his pony Orphan Annie across his family's acreage, he constructed waterwheels, "contraptions of his own from abandoned machinery", and houses for the farm cats.[6] For Wiens, building the cat habitats was not play: "That was their place, not mine. I was an architect and I didn't know it."[7] He and one of his two brothers, Bert, would drive holes for fence posts with a crowbar, as recounted by Bernard Flaman: "The incongruity between his own physical strength and the unyielding earth required invention for almost every task and also caused him to observe and analyze the forces required to start the hole and drive the post."[4] Flaman and others point to anecdotes such as these as the source of Wiens' brand of "prairie modernism": "an astonishing capacity for invention, a love of pragmatic problem-solving, a sensitivity to the landscape, and a sophisticated approach to structure and form",[4] all skills useful in his career as an architect.[8]

Like many Mennonites across the Canadian Prairies, the Wiens family spoke Low German and learned High German and English as second and third languages, which Wiens learned at the age of seven.[7]

Education

The young Wiens attended Lady Bank School, a one-room school in Glen Kerr.[7]

Agriculture, machine tooling, and painting
A farmer-Mennonite practicality was one of his great virtues... but he was also an intellectual.

Trevor Boddy[6]

Wiens studied agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon under a wheat pool sponsorship program for young farmers, and machine tooling at the Moose Jaw Technical School.[1] Having developed a "strong connection" to both nature and art during his childhood—he made his own brushes—Wiens studied painting in Banff, Alberta with A.Y. Jackson,[6] a founder of the Group of Seven,[9] at the Banff Centre for Continuing Education.[1] He continued to pursue his interest in painting "largely in isolation."[6]

Industrial design and architecture

In 1949, Wiens was accepted by the Rhode Island School of Design in Providebce on a full scholarship,[1] where he began studies in industrial design, intending to design farm equipment, but switched to the architecture program under a curriculum strongly influenced by "the high Modernism" of the Bauhaus,[3] emphasizing a cross-disciplinary approach to architecture, design and the arts.[6] The School was also strong in graphic and industrial design, and this interdisciplinary approach "resonated" with him.[6] His fourth year project was a design for a ski lodge.[4] Wiens graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture.[5][note 2]

Wiens made contributions to the design of the SaskPower Building in Regina while working under Joseph Pettick.

Career

Upon graduation, Wiens returned home to a progressive milieu, according to Trevor Boddy: "Progressive politics fed progressive artistic ideas" and he fit in well in forward-looking Regina.[6] Moreover, the economy was experiencing a boom not only in agriculture but also in extractive industries (oil, gas, uranium and metals), attracting international architects to Regina.[11]

Apprenticeships, 1954–1957

Wiens apprenticed at Stock and Ramsay Architects as a designer until 1955, and then until 1957 for Joseph Pettick,[5][11] for whom he made "modest" contributions to the design of the breakthrough "flying-Y"-shaped Saskatchewan Power Corporation headquarters,[3][11] which pays homage to the exotic, free-flowing designs of Oscar Niemeyer's contemporaneous buildings in Brasilia, "flying in the face of four-sided boxes everywhere."[11] At the same time, Wiens developed close intellectual, artistic and friendship links with the Regina Five, some of Canada's most acclaimed and advanced abstract painters of the period.[3] Immersed as he was in the landscape, Trevor Boddy finds it surprising that he chose to practice in urban neighbourhoods.[9]

Clifford Wiens Architect Ltd., 1957–1969

Wiens became a registered architect in Saskatchewan in 1957, setting up practice in Regina under the firm name Clifford Wiens Architect Ltd.[10] Over a period of forty years, the firm completed more than a hundred projects including a series of schools, creameries and fire halls.[4] The practice was unusual for its extremely wide range of clients and building types. Trevor Boddy remarks that "bold detailing and elegant spaces characterize even the most modest of his works," notably the early trio of churches: St. Joseph's in Whitewood (1959), Mennonite Brethren in Regina (1961), and Our Lady in Moose Jaw (1966).[3]

St. Joseph's Church, Whitewood (1959)

In 1958, Wiens began work on what is considered to be his first important project, St. Joseph's, a Roman Catholic church in Whitewood.[1][12] The wooden structure, completed in 1959, is simple and triangular.[2] Wiens settled almost from the beginning upon a triangular design, not simply for aesthetic reasons, but also because "the triangle is a very stable shape".[13] Thompson suggests the slanting shingled roof extends all the way to the ground "as though protecting the congregation from prairie winds."[2]

The same year, Wiens designed Pense Elementary School in Pense, Saskatchewan.[5]

John Nugent Studio, Lumsden (1960)
Main article: John Nugent Studio

Wiens designed sculptor and chandler John Nugent's studio, known as St. Mark's Shop at the time, and located on a 2.7-hectare parcel of land that forms the north slope of the Qu'Appelle Valley in Lumsden.[14] Wiens used various types of concrete construction, the structure consisting of a candlemaking studio and a circular foundry with a thin-shelled conical roof, constructed of pre-tensioned, thin-shell concrete, and connected to a fan-shaped sculpture that appears to float on a band of glass at its base.[2][14] Sections of concrete culverts were used for the window openings, illustrating the combination of manufactured elements with crafted elements characterizing the overall nature of the structure.[14] The studio was constructed over successive weekends in one year by Nugent and Wiens, with help from artists Kenneth Lochhead (one of the Regina Five) and Roy Kiyooka.[14]

According to a provincial government guide to heritage properties, the primary architectural significance of the Studio is its "innovative design which integrates the building with its surrounding landscape", the roof of the foundry in particular, which is "structurally unique".[15] Wiens called the design philosophy he had developed by the time of designing the Studio "total focus", a combination of structural and architectural ideas.[14] For its inventive design, the Studio received a Massey silver medal in 1967 from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.[14] The Studio has been a Provincial Heritage Property since 2005.[14]

The same year, Wiens designed the Lumsden Eight-Room School[5] and the offices of Regina's largest private employer, IPSCO Steel,[4][16] and began a decade of service as the president of the Regina Chapter of Architects (1960–1969).[17]

Round Auditorium, Connaught School and other school auditoria, Regina (1960–1961)

About the same time, Wiens designed auditoria for four public schools in Regina,[5] including a round auditorium for the Connaught School, then the city's oldest school building (built in 1912), in the Cathedral district.[18] The auditorium consisted of a reinforced concrete slab on grade, concrete reinforced walls with a brick finish, and a dome shaped roof of reinforced concrete.[19] The school was torn down in September 2014. Inspired by the Wiens-designed frieze which had once encircled the auditorium, a group of volunteers saved some of the red and gold colour bricks, limestone and marble with a view to recycling them into a new structure.[20][21]

Mennonite Bretheren Church, Regina (1961)

As Wiens noted in a description of this Regina church, Mennonite churches had typically been simple clapboard structures, "often only one step removed from being a home".[22] He attempted to maintain a "simplicity" in the building so as to convey a feeling of shelter, not just from the elements, "but from the world which is so much an underlying theme in the Mennonite way of life" and to that end the church is scaled to a small congregation, with a sloping wall and "an almost total absence of windows"; even the continuous recessed gutter which isolates the roof from the building is meant to convey the sense of it being draped over the roof "like a blanket".[22] The "unique" plywood beams, in a W-arrangement, provided lightweight roof support at minimum cost.[23] The Church received a Massey Medal mention in 1964.[23]

Lakeshore Residence, near Lebret (1962)

A noted residential project is the Lakeshore Residence (also called the Kramer Cottage or Kramer Residence after the original occupants)[24] in the Qu'Appelle Valley near Lebret, a house which "celebrates the landscape" with an angled roof and concrete and wood materials, "attuning itself to the site."[2] The house rises from a moat at a stark angle "like a small cathedral". Wiens said: "It provides a vertical counterpoint to the horizon line of the prairies", which generates a "powerful" sense of the vastness of the landscape.[25] A pioneering example of environmental design, there is a system of buffering spaces and apertures within the wooden walls to redistribute the heat and humidity generated by the home's indoor swimming pool, Wiens later remarking: "The walls warm themselves. Can you imagine?"[25] The house also features a louvred façade functioning as a brise-soleil: an architectural manifestation of how, when stepping out of a building into "the blaze of the prairie sun," the reflexive gesture is to shield one's eyes.[25] The residence was nominated for a Massey Medal.[26]

Maple Creek Camp and Picnic Grounds Administration Building (1965)

In 1965, Wiens designed a Trans-Canada Highway campground and administration building at Maple Creek:[5] a "simple, classical post-and-lintel structure," lying low along the horizon and in harmony with the prairie landscape.[13] Some of the structures at the campground feature square plans with roofs supported on a rotated cross structure similar to John Nugent's studio and the Silton chapel.[4] The buildings at the campsite were selected as winner of the Design Canada Concrete Awards program in 1967, which was sponsored by the National Design Council of the Department of Industry and the Portland Cement Association.[27]

Legislative Building
• Significant projects

The same year, Wiens undertook two projects, the first involving the Poultry Science and Horticultural Building at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon;[5] the second was a major project, the renovation and restoration of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building, taking some fourteen years to complete,[1] called a "masterful" renovation by Steven Mannell.[28]

Church of Our Lady, Moose Jaw (1966)

The third in the trio of churches is another Roman Catholic church featuring a single stained glass window depicting the Madonna and Child by the Rault Brothers of Rennes, France to the right of the altar, the church designed to control light and heat entering the building.[29] Wiens won a prize for the architectural concept.[30]

Heating and Cooling Plant, University of Regina (1967)
Main article: Heating and Cooling Plant (University of Regina)
I had to build a case for anything more architectural than a steel box, so this A-frame is a concrete temple to technology, with concrete bays and removable end walls set to the precise size and shape required by heaters, pumps, switches and chillers.

Clifford Wiens[31]

The building's understated exuberance is articulated through an elegant construction of site-cast concrete, a stunning counterpoint to its prairie landscape and a monument to powerful and everlasting architecture that supports research and education.

Ian Chodikoff[32]

In March 1965, plans were announced in the Leader-Post for a modern central heating and air conditioning plant that would "provide architectural interest as well as warmth" to what was then the newly built Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan, with two boilers to be installed immediately, a third to be added in 1970 and a fourth in 1975 when the final bay was added.[33] The University of Regina Heating and Cooling Plant is distinguished by a unique A-frame form of exposed pre-cast concrete and corten steel.[34] The building resembles a prairie grain elevator, thereby linking the project to its region: "a concrete pyramid with descending struts and a triangle at its front," William P. Thompson calls the building "striking in its expressiveness and dynamism for a purely functional, industrial structure."[2] Michelangelo Sabatino and Rhodri Windsor Liscombe call the work "powerfully evocative of ancient master-building".[35]

Called the architect's masterpiece by Ian Chodikoff,[32] the Plant is an example of innovative and expressive modernist architecture, quickly becoming a city landmark, and recognized by the Prestressed Concrete Institute Award (U.S. and Canada, 1967).[36]

• National and international recognition

Wiens rose to national prominence following Expo 67[28] as the Heating and Cooling Plant and his "exemplary forward-looking homes" established his reptuation as "one of Canada's greatest Modernist architects."[11] The same year, he won the Merit Award and Award of Excellence from the National Design Council of Canada (1967, the first of which for a Ford Motor dealership building).[37][38]

The Plant won Wiens a second Massey Medal in 1970,[28] and eventually, the Prix du XXe siècle in 2011.[34] A comment by the jury reads:

The Heating and Cooling Plant embodies the successful marriage of sophisticated structural design, contemporary materials, adaptation of plan and section to function, and expressive form that was the goal of the best of modern architecture. The direct and unadorned industrial materials, their natural colours and simple forms reflect the utilitarian agricultural equipment and structures of the prairie farms with which Wiens was familiar, while the bold silhouette of the building recalls that ubiquitous prairie landmark, the grain elevator.[34]

When Wiens took the stage in Vancouver to receive the award, he remarked that he would gladly trade the award for the chance to have his project maintained as he had originally designed it, at which the audience applauded robustly.[25]

Silton Chapel (1969)
The most primeval piece of land architecture in Canada.

Lisa Rochon, Up North: Where Canada's Architecture Meets the Land[39]

Half the art of architecture is knowing the site.

Clifford Wiens (quoted by Trevor Boddy)[40]

Consecrated as Our Lady of the Lake Chapel (Archdiocese of Regina), located near the village of Silton, a short drive from Lumsden,[41] or about 45 minutes from Regina,[39] on a bench of land just below the brow of the embankment overlooking Last Mountain Lake at Saskatchewan Beach is an outdoor or summer chapel without walls.[40] Wiens designed a pyramidal roof which appears to hover or float above the congregational area, supported by glulam support beams[2][39] held up on concrete pillars, a natural boulder underneath serving as an altar, while a small cast-concrete pillbox provides a vestiary and the baptismal fount filled with water running off the cedar-shingled cantilevered roof down an iron chain serving as an improvised drainpipe.[40][39] The chapel's seemingly floating corners were suspended by tension rods embedded in the wood-frame structure of the roof, and require periodic adjustment; the rods in turn are connected to a compression plate at the apex, transferring the load of the corners to the top, then down the roof structure to the glulam beams.[39] When first built, the chapel had no pews and a dirt floor later replaced by a layer of pebble stones.[41]

The chapel won Wiens a third Massey Medal in 1970.[42] Thompson says that the structure has been called "sublime" for the way it pays particular attention to the landscape and "reveals itself to the visitor."[2] Architecture critic Trevor Boddy asserts that the design appeals regardless of religious affiliation:

Whether one is pagan (natural vistas provide the "stained glass" for worshippers on the bench-pews), Roman Catholic (this is a fully consecrated church), aesthete (the design is a chef d'oeuvre of minimalism) or engineer (with a steel vertical tie-rod at centre, the foursquare roof acts structurally as an innovative space frame). Seldom has Mies van der Rohe's dictum of "less is more" resonated as forcefully as here – architecture reduced to its essence, and in so doing, amplified cosmically.[40]

In 2011, the chapel was vandalized, and when heritage conservation architect Bernard Flaman went to investigate the damage, he found the chapel was in danger of collapse from a slump in the valley hillside. The chapel was saved from imminent collapse by a single post hastily placed below the sagging north beam, though more work needed to be done.[39] By September 2011, there were concerns that the Church would opt to demolish the chapel rather than have the chapel designated a heritage site.[40] In November 2015, Flaman wrote the community's efforts to raise funds and awareness had failed to generate the necessary amount to repair the building.[39] It is scheduled for demolition as of 2020.

Wiens and Associates Ltd., 1970–1979

By 1970, when the firm's name changed to Wiens and Associates Ltd.,[10] the architect's designs were published widely "as an exemplar of the remarkable flowering of Canadian architecture in the wake of Expo 67."[28] The same year, Wiens completed a new studio space on Albert Street. The roof was a quarter-inch plate of steel, a concave arch hanging from a frame of steel pipes.[6]

Spiral Teepee Picnic Shelters (1970)

Wiens would still sometimes undertake small, idiosyncratic projects, such as the Spiral Teepee Picnic Shelters located in provincial parks across Saskatchewan, which Thompson describes as "just an upward whorl of wood open at one end," with room enough inside for a family to sit and have lunch or wait out a downpour.[2] Because construction was scheduled for winter when the ground is frozen the design called for only the centre pole to penetrate the ground, then footings were added in the spring. Wiens also planned the design so that rafter poles would absorb some ground movement.[43] The same year, Wiens served as president of the Saskatchewan Association of Architects.[17] The shelters were recognized by the Architectural Awards Program for 1975, sponsored jointly by the American Institute of Architects and the Red Cedar Shingle and Handsplit Shake Bureau with a "first award" in the commercial-institutional category.[43] In 2018, the shelters were included in a MacKenzie Art Gallery exhibition curated by Timothy Long on the experience of driving through the Province.[44]

Nakusp Hot Springs in 2019

Nakusp Hot Springs Resort (1974)

A more prominent project from the period is the Hot Springs Resort in the foothills of the Selkirk Mountains just outside of Nakusp, British Columbia (1974).[3][45] About 90 minutes from Revelstoke,[46] sited "in the middle of the wilderness", nine miles away from town on a former logging road that winds past the village dump, the resort is shaped like an amphitheatre and built of rock and red cedar, housing a 40-ft. diameter hot springs pool on the banks of the rushing Kasmanax River, next to a campsite.[47] The resort includes four cedar chalets in a narrow A-frame design.[48][49] The pool's water is piped in from the source of the springs half a mile away.[47] Premier Dave Barrett, who opened the resort officially,[48] is supposed to have called it the Taj Mahal at the end of the Burma Road.[47]

The resort was built for $700,000 and paid for by the federal and provincial governments in the form of grants for the benefit of the municipality, which owns it.[47] Wiens, referred to only as "the architect from Saskatchewan" in a 1976 article in The Vancouver Sun, was the only "outsider" involved the development; at the inaugural dinner he is said to have spoken about visiting the site and being overwhelmed by "a funnel of cosmic forces".[47] Not everyone in Naskup was pleased with the development, and continued to hike a half-mile to the site of original hot springs, until one night when the old pool was "mysteriously dynamited."[47]

R.C. Dahl Centre, Swift Current (1974)

Named for a former mayor,[50] the "innovative" R.C. Dahl Centre was completed in Swift Current in October 1974,[51] housing a public library and an art gallery, inaugurated at the time as the Swift Current National Exhibition Centre.[52] The art gallery share of the building was funded by the National Museums policy for Canada and was designed according to National Museums standards for atmospheric control.[50]

In 1978, an abstract sculpture by Douglas Bentham was installed at the entrance, titled Open Series IV.[53]

• Unrealized project (1976)

Taking "a dramatic leap in scale",[4] Wiens submitted an entry for a limited architectural competition for the new National Gallery of Canada building which took place in Ottawa in 1976, the winner announced as Parkin Architects Partners in 1977 (a new gallery was not actually built at that time, however).[54][55]

Aerial views of the CBC building in Regina.

Wiens Johnstone Architects Ltd., 1979–1986

In 1979, Wiens partnered with Ross Johnstone to form Wiens Johnstone Architects Ltd.[56]

Prince Albert City Hall behind statue of John Diefenbaker outside.

CBC Studios, Regina (1983)

The other project that Flaman said displays a dramatic leap in scale is the Regina headquarters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,[4] a facility which was originally expected to have opened in 1979–80.[57] The work forms a galleria to view the dome of the Legislative Building (which Wiens finished renovating at the end of the previous decade). Thompson describes the cement building as having "a staggered, blunt shape... which seems to be hunkering down and leaning into the landscape", the "directness and rawness of the building" a reflection of the aims of the institution."[2]

The new building accommodated both English and French radio and television studios, including TV studios of 3,500 and 1,800 square feet, a packaging studio, two automated on-air booths and a central equipment room, as well as seven remote electronic field production units, three electronic editing suites, six quad VTR's, three telecine chains, character generators and electronic slide store units, while the radio facilities included nine studios, multi-track mixing consoles, 16 listening/editing rooms and automated switching systems.[57] Wiens won a City of Regina Heritage Award in 1983.[5] Victor Cicansky produced a long ceramic mural for the building, The Garden Fence (1984).[58] There is a piece of abstract sculpture in the galleria by John Nugent.[59]

In late February 2019, the Saskatchewan Government announced plans to acquire the building for the purpose of turning it into a centralized provincial archive; the CBC would continue to operate in parts of the building under a lease.[60]

Prince Albert City Hall (1984)

Another prominent work by Wiens is the postmodernist city hall in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,[61] officially opened in October 1984 after two years of construction, replacing the heritage building now used as an Arts Centre.[62] Located on the eastern part of Church Square, the city hall's primary building materials are Tyndall stone and brick,[61][62] featuring a Tyndall stone façade[61] with nested stone rectangles in its central doorway and window, a clock tower rising from its mid-point, which William P. Thompson suggests projects "judiciousness and dignity."[2]

A statue of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who practiced law in Prince Albert, has stood outside the city hall since 2003.[63][64] The statue holds the Bill of Rights passed by Parliament in 1960.[63]

Atrium and central staircase, Administrative Building, University of Saskatchewan.

Administration Building, University of Saskatchewan (1987)

In 1979, portions of the University of Saskatchewan's College Building were declared unsafe and it was decided to build a new building adjacent to the original structure for $6.6 million, a three-storey stone clad building containing 4,646 square metres of floor space, approximately the same office space as the College Building.[65] Construction began in the fall of 1985 and was completed in October 1987.[65]

Exhibiting the architect's "trademark use" of simple tectonic forms and "original construction details", the building's exterior materials were in keeping with those of the College Building, primarily "greystone", which is characteristic of the campus, complemented by cut Tyndall stone, while precast concrete panels form a base for the exterior walls, and the double-glazed windows with aluminum frames.[66] Painted exposed concrete, often accompanied by grey tile, is the primary element and "character-defining material" of the interior, including the columns (doors are either oak or painted steel, the latter also used for handrails and balustrades such as the one featured as part of the main stair.[66]

The building is roughly T-shaped in plan, connecting to the back of the College Building with a recessed entrance and lobby.[66] The two buildings are directly linked[65] on all three levels, with many interior spaces in the Administration Building defined by the enclosure of the exterior walls of the College Building.[66] The entrance originally featured a triangular canopy, since removed during the 2005 expansion.[66] The new office space is an open concept design with movable partition walls to provide flexibility of use.[65] The open plan has allowed for its reconfiguration many times.[66]

The Peter MacKinnon Building (formerly College Building) in 2012.
The Administration Building's expanded entrance.

Overall, the style is postmodern, featuring references in form, detail and materiality to the historical architecture of the campus, but simplified in its detail, for example: the front face of the building features a shallow bay with a gabled roof line, referencing similar details on the College Building and other collegiate gothic examples, and the exterior stone detailing references historical precedents in materiality and form, but is abstracted through the use of simplified ornamentation.[66]

Most of the College Building was closed after the completion of the Administration Building in 1987.[66] Wiens was involved in its 2005 renovation, the architect having written one of the planning reports, describing the renovation process as akin to "replacing the bones in a chicken while keeping the chicken alive".[67] The College Building was renamed the Peter MacKinnon Building, after the university president who resisted calls for it to be demolished.[67]

The Administration Building was expanded at the same time renovations were going on in the adjacent building, and features a new glass façade.

Clifford Wiens Architect Ltd., 1986–1994

Leslie Jen has remarked that Saskatchewan's fortunes waned with the end of the 1980s and "the province languished for almost two solid decades, architecturally and otherwise."[28] Wiens and Johnstone parted ways in 1986 and he resumed work as "Clifford Wiens Architect Ltd." in Regina until 1994.[6]

Auxiliary Building, Augustana University College (1986)

The Auxiliary Building provides space for large art studios, faculty offices and classrooms.[68] The building Wiens designed for what was then Camrose Lutheran College in 1986 is frequently cited as a highlight from this period.[3][8]

Move to Vancouver and lifetime recognition, 1995–2012

In his sixties, Wiens closed his practice in Regina and moved to Vancouver (by way of Arizona, where he taught for two years)[6] and continued to practice as "Clifford Wiens Architect" and act as a consultant,[1][3] mainly homes, across North America,[13] including "an important project" for a family in Denver, Colorado.[1]

In 2005, Wiens, then aged 79, became the first Western Canadian architect to be given a career retrospective,[69] in a major travelling exhibition celebrating forty years of his work from 1955 to 1995, curated by Trevor Boddy and organized by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, titled Telling Details: The Architecture of Clifford Wiens, displaying over 170 examples of work including architectural models, drawings and photographs.[3][1] Some of the models were built specially for the exhibition by Wiens.[69] The original event, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Saskatoon and by a contribution from the Department of Canadian Heritage Museums Assistance Program,[70] also incorporated a one-day symposium titled Homemade Modernism: Prairie Architecture Since 1955, with artists, architects and critics describing Wiens' place in the visual arts culture of Western Canada, a panel discussion which featured architecture professors Neil Minuk and Graham Livesey, artist Sky Glabush, and heritage architect Bernard Flaman, the keynote address given by Wiens himself.[71] There was also a performance piece by Wiens' daughter Robin Poitras of New Dance Horizons (Regina).[1] She performed again at the 2007 venue, the MacKenzie Art Gallery,[72] where a second symposium took place and Clifford Wiens led a tour of some of his buildings in the Regina area.[73]

In 2010 Wiens was given life membership in the Saskatchewan Association of Architects,[10] followed by the RAIC "award of the century" (Prix du XXe siècle, 2011) for his work on the Heating and Cooling Plant.[1] About this time, Wiens found it difficult to maintain an active practice due to illness, and turned to writing.[1]

Product design

Besides buildings, Wiens also designed products, including farm machinery and furniture throughout his career as an architect.[6]

Participation in the Mid-Canada project

In 1969, Wiens was one of several professionals, CEOs, and politicians invited by Richard Rohmer to a conference in Thunder Bay which he hoped would convince the Canadian Government to "forge a new nation" in the dense woods around Lake Athabasca, Hudson Bay and northern British Columbia, which Rohmer called the "Mid-Canada Plan".[74][75] Rohmer took the planners on field trips in DC-3s to Canada's remote boreal communities, including Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Inuvik, flying "just above the treetops." Wiens spent these flights in the cockpit, marvelling at the country rushing beneath him: "You felt as if a hand was suspending you above the landscape".[74] Despite that experience, Wiens was a dissident at the conference, along with most other Westerners.[74]

Lecturing and teaching

Wiens lectured at the University of Saskatchewan (1966–1967) and at North Dakota State University (1970).[8]

Further afield, Wiens was a visiting professor at the University of Manitoba (1968), the University of Calgary (1977), and the University of British Columbia (1985).[2] After winding down the Regina company, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University before his permanent move to Vancouver.[3]

Authorship

Over the course of his career, Wiens published brief descriptions of his projects, since collected.[1] In 1979, he contributed an essay at the request of The Canadian Architect magazine, which had invited him and several renowned architects and educators "to debate whether 'Prairie architecture' existed".[76]

After retirement, Wiens wrote and published seventeen books diverse in subject and genre: poetry, prose, joke books, memoirs of his youth during the Great Depression, professional memoirs, and edited collections.[1][77] "I did not start writing more seriously until the end of my architectural career. My career as an Architect required clarity in communication. A long life communicating with clients, authorities and contractors developed skill and ease in saying what I meant."[1]

• Memoirs

Two substantive works of architectural and personal memoirs, Project By Project (selected projects from 1953 to 2012) and Rewind and Fast Forward, were reviewed by Steven Mannell: "Read together, these two volumes are a rich account of an architect's intertwined life and career, and provide new insight into an important body of modern Canadian architecture."[28] Wiens won the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan Heritage Architecture Excellence Award for the pair of memoirs.[78] Wiens said he valued the award as confirmation that his time in Saskatchewan was appreciated.[7]

Design philosophy

Influences and aesthetics

Citing the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, Wiens has suggested that the basic tenets of good design and construction have not changed much over time: architecture is all about pleasing "eye, mind, and body", but the essential question behind the design of a building is practical: how will the space be used? "Design is solving a problem"; aesthetics is important, but an architect must still "construct something that works."[13] He also called architects "improvers": when they do things well, it leaves the world a little bit improved.[79]

Modernism and "total focus"

For Wiens, Modernism is not historically isolated from the underlying principles of classical architecture: "the way the building works, the way the building is situated, and the way it expresses the essence of modern materials" is what makes it modernist, and good design encompasses the entirety of the building's setting, ideally making the building appear "organic", as though the building were "growing out of the ground like a tree".[13] Wiens once expressed this in phenomenological terms: when designing, he said, "I feel the beam bending, the wire stretching, the column quivering under load and the sway of it all in a heavy wind."[6]

The client and uniqueness

Wiens emphasized the importance of respecting the needs and resources of the client: "To do otherwise is to lose credibility and consequently the opportunity to serve again, for without the client the privilege of shaping space does not exist."[5] Related to this was his belief that there is "a quality of uniqueness in every design problem."

To remove the element of uniqueness from architecture, as is occurring in the somewhat mindless mass production of buildings today, represents a kind of technical cloning for which we can, at best, only congratulate ourselves for having mastered technique. To clearly articulate the essential and unique activities of human use ... represents, for me, the excitement of the design process.[5]

Critical assessment

Kent Hurley says that Clifford Wiens was able "to distill a building to its essence and to express the distillation in simple floor plans and eye-catching forms", pointing out that Wiens is evidently preoccupied with "rigid and simple geometry" in his "formal and static" plans, but "lightens his seriousness" in the three-dimensional form itself, where he "achieves some of the memorable effects that have enhanced his reputation.""[5]

William P. Thompson describes Wiens' work as reflecting both corporate modern architecture and the broader expressionist movement, with a distinctive approach to structure and form; an experimental International Style, but with "an expressive formal aesthetic and a respectful sensitivity to context and the surrounding landscape."[2] A conscious reference to the ubiquitous prairie horizon is Wiens' most persistent structural signature, as he himself points out in an episode of Edifice & Us:

I like to create this horizon line right through the building, and I get a lot of pleasure out of doing that and you find that a lot in my buildings. There's a line going right through as if the building is floating... What belongs to the ground belongs to the ground and what belongs to the sky belongs to the sky and they all just meet on the horizon line.[80]

Hurley emphasizes this "standard technique" in his own assessment, suggesting that Wiens wants to do two things: "to express in built form the horizontality of his sites and also to interrupt this horizontality visually in order to make his building stand out as an 'event'"; the "floating roof structure" serves as a "flag" which Wiens frequently enhances by sinking the base of the building into the ground as in John Nugent's Studio and the Silton Chapel.[5]

Bernard Flaman identifies similarities among such diverse works as the Heating and Cooling Plant, the Silton Chapel, and the Nugent Studio despite their "radically different" purposes and being formally and materially unique, exhibiting "strong, simple forms" and "ignoring modernism's dogmatic side and the dictum of flat roofs".[4] All three find ways of filtering "the strong prairie sunlight" and establish "a delicate relationship with the landscape."

Most striking, however, is the way each building springs from the combination of a structural and an architectural idea, beginning with a close analysis of tension and compression elements that are resolved with architectural details of startling invention.[4]

Trevor Boddy summarizes the body of work as a bold range of buildings combining "the pragmatism and romanticism that co-exist at the heart of prairie culture."[3] It is "widely recognized" that Wiens was one of three architects from Western Canada (the others being Douglas Cardinal and Etienne Gaboury) who were born in and worked across the region and, despite their diverse backgrounds, forged a distinctive "Prairie" regional architecture that blended First Nations and colonial traditions,[76] but Boddy asserts that Wiens stands out "even among this distinguished company for the rigour and originality of his construction details, some of them born of his training and parallel career as an industrial designer."[3] Arthur Erickson once declared: "Not only is he Saskatchewan's finest architect ever, but Clifford Wiens' work is of international importance."[79] After his death, Boddy said: "There's almost no debate that Clifford Wiens is the finest architect ever to practice in Saskatchewan."[9] A month later, he lamented that the architect's reputation has not spread very widely, in part because of his geographic isolation, and that while the work is included in most of the major historical surveys of Canadian architecture, Boddy believes it is underrepresented: "He was and remains one of the most undocumented of the geniuses of Canadian architecture."[6]

Legacy

Clifford Wiens fonds

The architectural archive left by Clifford Wiens resides at the University of Regina.[79] The archive, or fonds, includes 5,200 architectural drawings, 100 photographs, about 120 presentation panels, and 19 slides, as well as personal, professional, and business records from 1953 to 1990 (as of January 2020).[10]

Deterioration among extant works

There has been a failure of upkeep for many of Wiens' private projects like the Silton Chapel, which Bernard Flaman found coming apart due to moisture rotting the wooden beams in 2015. Trevor Boddy remarks that all such buildings are "vulnerable" and "in danger", but that if the buildings are preserved, "I think history will be very kind to him."[6]

Personal life

Wiens once said he thought of himself as being "a perfectionist in an imperfect world".[9] An indefatigable worker, Clifford Wiens practiced design or acted as a consultant for some sixty years, and he would have gone on longer but had to stop for health reasons, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994.[7] "It was the cancer that assailed me that put an end to an active practice that moved me to write my memoirs that in the end turned my focus to philosophy and poetry."[1]

Residence and pastimes

For thirty-five years, Wiens lived in the Broderick Residence at 3248 Albert Street (1927, designed by Van Egmond and Storey)[81] near the district of Lakeview, Regina.[82] He made two changes to the property. The first was the addition of a tall, white, thirty-metre garden wall constructed across the front and halfway along the north side[81] (Wiens was an avid gardner).[83] It was sometimes referred to jokingly as the Berlin Wall.[7] The second change was to move the original attached garage to the rear property line, connecting it to the house with a "cleanly designed, glassed-in link" serving as a family room and an energy-saving swimming pool.[81]

Wiens spoke of his love of driving in one of his many cars, particularly an early 1960s Bentley, "a memorable vehicle–especially for Regina–and one that expresses his design appreciation."[4]

Marriage and children

The Wiens family visited art galleries, attended powwows, and played music at home.[83] As adults, their six children (daughters Robin Poitras, Mieka Tomilin, Inga Wiens, Susan Wright and Lisa McNeil; son, Nathan Wiens) went into creative professions spanning cuisine, jewellery, design, and dance.[6]

She made everything... all the pots we ate from, our sweaters. And my father made the structures we played in.

Robin Poitras[6]

Patricia Wiens

Clifford Wiens married Vancouver-born Patricia Elizabeth Leigh in 1956,[6][5] a graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and "a strong intellectual and creative partner."[6] Both were passionate about nature and art.[83] She worked in the early 1950s for the Executive Secretary of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Norah McCullough, to set up "a fully operational studio for the use of local communities."[84] An artist (pottery) and an educator,[84] she followed the path familiar to women of her generation, turning her attention to raising her children.[6] Late in life, Patricia Wiens was stricken with dementia, another factor in her husband's turn to writing.[1] She died in 2018,[85] after sixty-two years of marriage.[6] Clifford and Patricia Wiens had six children, and, at the time of her death in 2018, twelve grandchildren.[85]

Robin Poitras
Main article: Robin Poitras

Robin Poitras, second child of six, is the co-founder artistic and managing director of New Dance Horizons in Regina,[6][83] as well as a performance and installation artist.[86] She is a recipient of the Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor Lifetime Achievement in the Arts award.[86]

She performed a dance piece at the 2005 retrospective in Saskatoon[1] and Regina two years later.[86] In 2014, she performed in another piece with set pieces designed by her father.[87] After his death in 2020, she inherited all of her father's books as well as a violin and mandolin.[88]

Nathan Wiens
Main article: Nathan Wiens

Nathan Wiens, the only son, is a naturalistic designer and woodworker (Wiens Studios),[89][90] who also founded and leads Chapel Arts, a group of "creators, fabricators, and artists" in Vancouver in 2006.[91][92] He is known as a craftsman of custom wood furniture pieces[89][93] whose list of clients includes Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, and Vicki Gabereau.[90][94] He says his father had "immeasurable influence" on him: "He and my mother created a rich creative environment for my five sisters and myself... He has been a tough act to follow, but he's left me room to rise as my own man."[6]

Friendships

Early in his career, Wiens developed close links with the Regina Five (painters Kenneth Lochhead, Arthur McKay, Ronald Bloore, Douglas Morton and Ted Godwin)[3][6] who pursued work in conversation with the abstract expressionism and colour field movements.[6] Wiens was included in the Five's original May 1961 show at the MacKenzie Art Gallery by art director Bloore, who considered Wiens part of the group for sharing "the same initiative, attitude and ambition", and was also included in the subsequent November exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.[95] Together with the artist and poet Roy Kiyooka, they formed a tight circle and were also family friends, as Robin Poitras recalls: "There was a lot of art-making, a lot of generosity, a lot of studio visits back and forth."[6] The MacKenzie Gallery acknowledged the association with the Five with The Regina Five Plus exhibition.[7]

Wiens designed Lochhead's Balgonie studio, a "slant-roofed, sky-lighted modernist building" on the site of an old blacksmith's shop behind Lochhead's house.[96] Years later, the structure was moved to Saskatoon, and, once refurbished, would serve as a new artist-in-residence studio on the site of the Mendel Art Gallery.[97][98]

Death

Clifford Wiens died on 25 January 2020 in his home in Vancouver, aged 93, having reviewed the proofs of his last book the day before.[77]

Professional affiliations

Exhibitions
  • Canadian Federation of Artists Exhibition • 1964, 1969, 1970[5]
  • Art Gallery of Ontario • The Architecture of Clifford Wiens, 1967[5]
  • Mendel Art Gallery and other Western Canada venues • Telling Details: The Architecture of Clifford Wiens[1]
    • Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 25 November 2005 – 15 January 2006
    • Cambridge Art Galleries, Cambridge, Ontario, 29 August-5 November 2006
    • Plug in Institute of Contemporary Art,[13] Winnipeg, 2 March-27 April 2007
    • Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 26 May-26 August 2007
    • Charles H. Scott Gallery, 4 June-13 July 2008[99]

Select bibliography
Monographs
  • Telling Details: The Architecture of Clifford Wiens. Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 2009. Published in conjunction with the exhibition curated by Trevor Boddy.
  • Project By Project: Architectural/Memoirs, Vancouver: Wiens Publishing House, 2012.
  • Rewind and Fast Forward. Vancouver: Wiens Publishing House, 2012.
Essay
  • "Prairie Architecture Examined: Regionalism and Reality." The Canadian Architect 24, no. 10 (October 1979)

Notes
  1. After first studying painting, agriculture, and machine tooling at three Canadian centres of higher learning.[1]
  2. Sources refer either to a BSc in architecture[10] or a BArch[5]

References
  1. "Clifford Wiens". University of Regina Library. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  2. Thompson, William P. "Clifford Wiens". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  3. Boddy, Trevor. "Wiens, Clifford (1926–)". Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  4. Flaman, Bernard (1 April 2006). "Telling Details". Canadian Architect.
  5. Emanuel, Muriel, ed. (1980). "Wiens, Clifford (Donald)". Contemporary Architects (Softcover reprint of the 1st ed.). London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press. pp. 879–881. ISBN 9780333252895. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
  6. Bozikovic, Alex (23 February 2020). "Brilliant Saskatchewan architect Clifford Wiens created poetic structures". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  7. Martin, Ashley (15 July 2016). "Architect made ordinary buildings extraordinary". The Regina Leader-Post. pp. 4–8. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  8. "Clifford Wiens". sknac.ca. Saskatchewan Network for Art Collecting. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  9. Atter, Heidi (4 February 2020). "Sask. architect Clifford Wiens dies at 93". CBC News. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  10. "Fonds – Clifford Wiens fonds". sain.scaa.sk.ca. Saskatchewan Archival Information Network. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  11. Neal, Tony (Fall 2007). "Atomic Age Architecture on the Canadian Plains" (PDF). Atomic Ranch (15): 48–59. ISSN 1547-3902. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  12. McLennan, David (2008). Our Towns: Saskatchewan Communities from Abbey to Zenon Park. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina. p. 44. ISBN 9780889772090. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  13. Smith, Kenton (15 March 2007). "Form and function: Clifford Wiens and his architectural philosophy" (PDF). The Uniter. University of Winnipeg. p. 18. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  14. "John Nugent Studio". Canada's Historic Places. Parks Canada. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  15. Guide to Preparing a Provincial Heritage Property Nomination (PDF). Regina: Heritage Conservation Branch Saskatchewan Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport. July 2013. p. 11. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  16. "IPSCO name coming down". CBC News. 17 June 2008. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  17. "Clifford Wiens". Sask Artists. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  18. "École Connaught Community School". NationalTrustCanada.ca. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  19. Connaught Facility Audit (PDF). [Regina]: FAME. 2012. p. 2. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  20. "Design team chosen for Connaught Brick Project". Cathedral Village Online. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  21. Martin, Ashley (2 July 2015). "Connaught bricks to spruce up busy corner". Regina Leader-Post. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  22. Wiens, Clifford (December 1963). "Hill Avenue Mennonite Brethren Church Regina" (PDF). RAIC Journal. 40 (12): 36–39. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  23. "Wood in Architecture" (PDF). Journal RAIC. 42 (12): 37–62. December 1965. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  24. "New book chronicles the evolution of both the province's architectural profession and its rich legacy of built heritage". Worth: 12–13. Spring 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  25. Weder, Adele (December 2011). "Clifford Wiens" (PDF). Western Living (40th anniversary issue): 46. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  26. "Médailles Massey Medals 1964: Report of the Jury" (PDF). Journal RAIC. 41 (11): 37–38. November 1964. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  27. "CMHA speaker sees great age for Canada". Leader-Post. 8 June 1968. p. 5. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  28. Woolner-Pratt, Kai; Jen, Leslie; Mannell, Steven (1 November 2013). "Books". Canadian Architect: 59–60. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  29. "Church of Our Lady, Moose Jaw". glassincanada.org. Institute for Stained Glass in Canada. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  30. Guay, Ray (21 September 1974). "A priest for 40 years". The Leader-Post. p. 17. Retrieved 10 February 2020.
  31. "Heating and Cooling Plant at The University Of Regina". Canadian Architect. 1 May 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  32. Chodikoff, Ian (1 May 2011). "Viewpoint". Canadian Architect.
  33. Johnson, Dale. "FLASHBACK: When Regina College opened the first women's residence in March 1916". University of Regina. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  34. "Prix du XXe siècle – 2011 Recipient". Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  35. Windsor Liscombe, Rhodri, and Michelangelo Sabatino (2016). Canada: Modern Architectures in History. London, [England]: Reaktion. p. 189. ISBN 9781780236339. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  36. "Prestressed Program Cites Five in Canada, Six in US" (PDF). AIA Journal: 14. September 1967. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  37. "Work by Wiens in competition". Leader-Post. 15 July 1970. p. 8. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  38. "Regina architect cited as Fellow". Leader-Post. 5 June 1974. p. 39. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  39. Flaman, Bernard (1 November 2015). "Looking Back: Silton Chapel". Canadian Architect: 66. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  40. Beatty, Gregory (2 September 2011). "Silton Chapel in Jeopardy?". Prairie Dog. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  41. Froese, Christalee (Summer 2008). "The Old Church, part 1". Westworld: 16–20.
  42. "Silton Chapel, Silton, Saskatchewan" (PDF). Architecture Canada. 47: 11. 12 October 1970. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  43. Wood, Larry (14 December 1975). "Architects rediscover shingles and shakes". Lansing State Journal. p. 85. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  44. "Road Construction: Perspectives on Driving through Saskatchewan". MacKenzie Art Gallery. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  45. "Nakusp Hot Springs, 1974". West Coast Modern League. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  46. Laux, Sara. "8 of Canada's most amazing remote spas". Cottage Life. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  47. Daniels, Alan (5 June 1976). "The Taj Mahal is at the end of a deserted logging road". The Vancouver Sun. p. 44. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  48. Parent, Rosemarie. "Nakusp Hot Springs: From poor man's spa to regional tourism treasure". bchistory.ca. British Columbia Historical Federation. Retrieved 10 February 2020.
  49. "Nakusp Hot Springs". Backcountry Skiing Canada. Retrieved 10 February 2020.
  50. "Simple art, complex skill, satisfying show". The Leader-Post. 11 December 1975. p. 7. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  51. "Honouring the Past: A History of Swift Current by Decade". City of Swift Current. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  52. Fudge, Paul H. (1974). Swift Current '74 : An Exhibition to Announce the Opening of the R.C. Dahl Centre Housing the Swift Current Public Library and the Swift Current National Exhibition Centre.
  53. "Creator of the RC Dahl Centre Sculpture Returns with Exhibit". Swift Current Online. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  54. "National Gallery of Canada, Limited Architectural Competition, Ottawa, Ontario (1976)". cca.qc.ca. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  55. "Clifford Wiens & Asscociates avec Marani Rounthwaite Dick". CANADIAN COMPETITIONS CATALOGUE. Université de Montréal. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  56. "Ross Johnstone". ARCAD. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  57. "CBKT-DT". History of Canadian Broadcasting. Canadian Communications Foundation. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  58. Kerr, Don (2004). The Garden of Art: Vic Cicansky, Sculptor. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. p. 50. ISBN 1552381226. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  59. ""He Taught Us To Consider The Beauty Around Us:" Remembering Saskatchewan Sculptor John Nugent". George Stromboulopoulos Tonight. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 20 March 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
  60. "Province to acquire Regina CBC building, provincial archives moving in". CBC News. 27 February 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  61. Boddy, Trevor (3 November 2003). "PRAIRE GHETTOES: Healing Urban Aboriginal Communities". Dooneyscafe.com. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  62. "Prince Albert City Hall". 3D Warehouse. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  63. Erikson, Wanda (31 July 2019). "Diefenbaker statue graces Prince Albert City Hall". Times Colonist. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  64. "Diefenbaker Statue, Prince Albert, 2003". A Portrait of Canada. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  65. "Campus Buildings: New Administration Building". scaa.usask.ca. University of Saskatchewan. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  66. "Administration Building.". University of Saskatchewan Heritage Register. University of Saskatchewan. November 2014. pp. 7/62–7/69. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  67. Beatty, George. "Architecture Vs. Apathy: Beautiful Sask buildings deserve more love". Prairie Dog. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  68. "Augustana Campus". University of Alberta. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  69. "Playing off presence of the Prairies". National Post. 15 December 2005. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  70. "Telling Details". MacKenzie Art Gallery. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  71. "Telling Details: The Architecture of Clifford Wiens". Canadian Architect. 1 November 2005. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
  72. "Dance Performance, June 23, 2007" (video). Retrieved 26 January 2020 – via YouTube.
  73. "The Ordinary Amazing Symposium: The Cultural Value of Modernist Architecture". Canadian Architect. 28 March 2007. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  74. Hopper, Tristan (1 September 2010). "You Could Have Been Here". Up here (September 2010). Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  75. Hopper, Tristan (1 September 2016). "The grandiose – but failed – 1960s plan by an Ontario war hero to settle a 'second Canada' below the Arctic". National Post. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  76. Livesey, Graham (2019). "Prairie Formations". In Lam, Elsa; Livesey, Graham (eds.). Canadian Modern Architecture: A Fifty Year Retrospective (1967–2017). Hudson, NY; Toronto: Princeton Architectural Press; co-published by Canadian Architect. pp. 299–332. ISBN 9781616896454. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
  77. "Clifford Donald Wiens". Regina Leader-Post. 6 February 2020. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  78. Seitz, Elizabeth (2016). ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE SOCIETY OF SASKATCHEWAN CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING WIENS' AWARD WINNING PUBLICATIONS (PDF). University of Regina archives and special collections Dr John Archer Library. p. 2. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  79. Lam, Elsa (7 February 2020). "In Memoriam: Clifford Wiens". Canadian Architect. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  80. Wolfson, Steve (director). "Architect Clifford Wiens Industrial Chic" (video (TV broadcast)). Retrieved 26 January 2020 – via YouTube.
  81. "Heritage Designation Application (17-H-02) Broderick Residence – 3248 Albert Street" (public report). reginask.iqm2.com. City of Regina. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  82. "3248 Albert Street". Royal LePage. Retrieved 26 February 2020.
  83. Martin, Ashley (27 May 2015). "Wider Dance Horizons". Regina Leader-Post. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  84. Alfoldy, Sandra (2005). "Setting the stage for Regina clay". In Long, Timothy (ed.). Regina Clay: Worlds in the Making. Regina: MacKenzie Art Gallery. p. 12. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  85. "Patricia Elizabeth Wiens". Regina Leader-Post. 2 February 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  86. "Brian Webb Dance Company presents two renowned artists in a world premiere performance" (media release). Wire Service. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  87. "The Dresswriter". The Dance Current. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  88. Martin, Ashley (7 May 2020). "Creative Isolation: Robin Poitras's world has got 'tiny' amid COVID-19". Regina Leader-Post. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  89. Thuncher, Jennifer (29 May 2014). "The Eastender: A home for art in 'real Vancouver'". Vancouver Courier. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  90. "Wiens Studios/Chapel Arts Ltd". Culture Crawl. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  91. "Chapel Arts is a group of creators, fabricators, and artists, organized and lead by Nathan Wiens". Chapel Arts. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  92. Mackie, John (7 December 2006). "Ex-funeral home reborn as live venue". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  93. Mackie, John (3 July 2009). "From fir and butternut to elegant dining room tables and beds". The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  94. Schneider, Jenelle (2 July 2009). "Gallery: Nathan Wiens' world". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  95. Sieberling, Irene (31 May 2011). "Regina Five retrospective at the MacKenzie". Regina Leader-Post. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  96. Fraser, Ted (2005). Kenneth Lochhead: Garden of Light. Regina, Saskatchewan: MacKenzie Art Gallery. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  97. "Kenneth Lochhead". Ottawa Citizen. 18 July 2006. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  98. Lerner, Martin. "Reconfirming Fred Mendel's Vision". Save the Mendel Art Gallery. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  99. "TELLING DETAILS: The Architecture of Clifford Weins [sic]". Connect. Emily Carr University. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.