Toronto's Inclusive Modernity: The Architecture of Jerome Markson

Jerome Markson's nearly six-decade-long architectural practice began in a time of profound transformation during the post-war period. His buildings were harbingers of important shifts in sociopolitical attitudes, urban policies, and modes of architectural production. From speculative homes in fledgling suburbs, to bespoke private houses, to social housing in downtown Toronto, to luxury landmarks like the Market Square condominiums, as well as important cultural and institutional buildings, his architecture reflects his pursuit of a more open and inclusive expression of modernity, one that moved past late-Modernism's formal legibility in favour of an increasingly idiosyncratic formal, spatial, and material expression. Toronto's Inclusive Modernity: The Architecture of Jerome Markson is the first comprehensive critical assessment of Markson's diverse body of work, interwoven with an account of Toronto's emergence as a cosmopolitan city. Extensive illustrations include wide-format collages by Scott Norsworthy, capturing Markson's buildings in their urban environments today; architectural drawings; and contemporaneous images from the popular press, such as Maclean's and Chatelaine magazines. The significance of Markson's work is examined through three main themes: his prescient use of photography to situate architecture as an inclusive cultural medium and object of human desire; his nuanced responsiveness to Toronto's fast-evolving urban and suburban geographies; and the ways in which his diverse influences--including the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, Britain's Townscape movement, and his encounters with vernacular architecture--were instrumental in his development of a more pluralistic, materially-oriented approach.