‘Those guys are selling shacks in the woods…’
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Perhaps no residential architectural style has undergone a greater shift in public perception over the past century than West Coast Modernism.
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“There’s definitely been a pendulum shift,” says Trent Rodney. “It’s growing every single year, beyond my wildest imagination. Ten years ago, people made fun of us. They’d say, ‘Those guys are selling shacks in the woods.’”
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Today, interest in the homes is picking up, especially among what Rodney calls “the creative class.”
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Westcoast Homes
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“The people acquiring a Hollingsworth, an Erickson, or homes by architects working today, they don’t want your cookie-cutter mansion. They can easily buy those. They want something connected to nature and connected to the cultural fabric of the city.”
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Pioneered by Fred Hollingsworth and Arthur Erickson along with Ron Thom, Barry Downs and Ned Pratt, what we now call West Coast Modern architecture emerged in the 1940s. Characterized by wood, glass and a strong connection to the landscape, it became one of British Columbia’s defining architectural movements.
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It flourished over the next three decades but fell out of fashion as tastes changed toward larger postmodern and neo-traditional homes and rising land values made many older modernist houses vulnerable to redevelopment. During the movement’s fallow years in the 1980s and 1990s, Peter Cardew continued to champion its principles of simplicity, craftsmanship and connection to place. Today, architects such as Patkau Architects, BattersbyHowat Architects, McLeod Bovell Modern Houses, Frits de Vries, D’Arcy Jones Architects, and Measured Architecture are carrying the tradition forward while embracing the same nature-first philosophy.
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“Why do people move to Vancouver?” Rodney says. “Ask anyone and one of the first things they say is nature. And the best way to enjoy our natural environment is the West Coast Modern home.”
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Rodney’s own interest in the movement began in the 2010s while he was working in luxury real estate. To preserve and sell the homes he had come to admire, he co-founded West Coast Modern.
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His first project was Fred Hollingsworth’s own house. Working alongside Hollingsworth’s son Russell, he helped save it from demolition.
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“It was incredibly at risk, definitely demo-bait. Most of the time it would have been torn down.”
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Over the past decade, his company has “represented hundreds of West Coast Modern homes without any sales resulting in a demolition.”
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That doesn’t mean the battle is over, however. Rodney estimates that as many as 50 per cent of architecturally significant West Coast Modern homes sold through the conventional real estate market are eventually demolished.
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“We’re seeing demolitions every month.”
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West Coast Modern homes can be found all over the province, but the highest concentration is on the North Shore.
