An Architect’s Address Book

Robert Lemon is an award-winning Canadian architect, with a special interest in historic buildings.

Agora Symposium features author Robert Lemon

An Architect’s Address Book Trailer

From the Author:
ADDRESS BOOK PROMO BLURB 5 NOVEMBER 2022

I kept a detailed journal of the summer I spent in York, completing my master’s thesis in architectural conservation. Reading it again during the pandemic, some twenty years later, the details of a mid-career architect going back to school in a foreign land (notwithstanding the shared language, there are many things in England that are decidedly foreign) made me think that the experience might be of interest to others. A colleague had coined the term Castle Howards End for my shabby digs on Howard Street not far from the grandeur of Castle Howard. A clever title for an article, I thought.

A few attempts at writing things other than heritage conservation plans, statements of significance, city council reports or technical articles had resulted in several partially completed stories that were gathering dust in a red file folder, (but still on my hard drive) having been rejected by a more than a few magazines and newspapers.

Thankfully Western Living magazine had entrusted me to put the words to their article about Estergreen, the country retreat my late partner Robert Ledingham and I had in rural Washington state for over thirty years. And I had an outline for a story about Five French Houses from the 20th century designed by Pierre Chareau, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Edwin Lutyens and Alvar Aalto. My Parisian friend Agnès Cailliau had opened the doors to them over the years since our conservation studies at ICCROM in Rome. That story I thought would be of interest to others.

My pandemic lightbulb moment was to draft a book proposal, a compilation of remembrances of all the places I have lived while studying or working during my architectural career. And noting the people that influenced me in each place. Address Book I called it. Not to be confused with a Little Black Book of travel tips and highlights, Address Book would be about places where I had actually lived and had a mailing address.

So I went through my CV and found that I had indeed lived, studied or worked in some remarkable places over the past six decades. The places included Ottawa, Paris, London, the high Arctic, Vancouver, Rome, Dorset, Copenhagen, Xi’an, York and LA. St. Thomas was the place where I was born and now I have retired to Stratford, two fascinating small cities in Southwestern Ontario. Put together, the table of contents had eighteen chapters.

After false starts getting an agent, I found an editor, then a willing publisher in ORO Editions. Then came the generous support of two sponsors in Vancouver that helped make the book happen. To keep it personal I wanted to use mostly my own photos, even though many old Kodachrome slides were starting to fade. With great delight I found in an unmarked yellow plastic container at the bottom of a shoe box of forgotten slides a snapshot I had taken with my Rolei B-35 of the BOAC jumbo jet that had taken me to Heathrow, my first trip abroad in 1972. You can find that faded photo on page 67.

That is how An Architect’s Address Book – the places that shaped a career came to be.

—Robert Lemon, Stratford Ontario

Size: 6″ x 9.5″ Portrait
Pages: 300pp
Binding: Hardbound
Publication Date: Spring 2023
ISBN: 978-1-954081-96-3
World Rights: Available