Contemporary architecture is more in the public eye today than it has been in a generation. Still, between the media’s star obsession and the design field’s global enthusiasms, most Canadians would be hard pressed to name a single Canadian architect. (No points for Frank Gehry.)

That’s a shame, because this visually luscious book, which features the work of 27 architectural firms, proves there is vital architecture in this country. From Patkau Architects’ exuberant Strawberry Vale school to the serene Atlantic “viewing instruments” of Brian Mackay-Lyons, Canadian architecture has had a clear resurgence in the past decade. And yet, as editor Andrew Gruft points out, few people are talking about Canadian buildings. This book is the first national survey of the field since 1986, and the last one was a catalogue written by Gruft. (Substance Over Spectacle accompanies a show at UBC’s Belkin Art Gallery.)

The five essays collected here are rooted in academic discussion, but they offer an admirably concise overview of the issues of landscape, regionalism, and ideology that affect our best buildings. Gruft himself, a professor emeritus at UBC, tries to pin down some of the common themes that tie together Canadian work – an admittedly unpopular project in today’s academic world. Indeed, George Baird, the dean of U of T’s faculty of architecture and landscape design, cheerfully departs from that argument. Instead of a national architecture, he sees individual “auteurs” with techniques and themes as consistent as Alfred Hitchcock’s. They’re all bound together, he says, by a vague “design culture … that is deep, resonant and worthy of being pleasurably pondered over time.”

The same could be said for the pictures in this book. Each firm gets only a few pages to display its work, so these are fairly superficial glimpses of complex buildings; still, they cumulatively make a case for the new modernism that our best architects are practising today. These projects are thoughtfully composed to work well and display a quiet beauty. In that respect, they’re very Canadian and deserve the attention of the wider culture.