Fred Hollingsworth: Art of Architecture

West Vancouver Art Museum celebrates the late architect’s Modernist legacy.

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Hailed as a pioneer of West Coast Modernism, architect Fred Hollingsworth was also a painter, metal worker and furniture designer. A show that plays homage to his many talents, Art of Architecture, on view at the West Vancouver Art Museum until Dec. 22, offers a broad sampling of his work.

Hollingsworth, born in Britain in 1917, immigrated to Canada as a child and signed on as an architect with a leading Vancouver design firm in 1946. As a fan of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, he and his architecture peers Ron Thom and Arthur Erickson, as well as Vancouver artist B.C. Binning, embraced the tenets of Modernism – clean horizontal lines, local building materials and a reverence for the site.

Darrin Morrison, the museum’s director, says it’s easy to see Wright’s influence in Hollingsworth’s approach to design. “But I think he took it in a uniquely West Coast tradition,” says Morrison. “He took the ideas, but adapted the forms to the Canadian topography.”

Hollingsworth also developed ideas about interior decoration.

“He was very much into designing whole environments, not just the building, but the interior fittings and furnishings,” says Morrison. “He not only designed them, but sometimes he made them himself.”

Witness the Hollingsworth-designed dining room set that greets visitors as they enter the exhibition. A matching chair sits in one corner. The museum’s walls are covered with hand-drawn plans and watercolour renderings of houses built and envisioned, along with photographs of his completed projects.

Hollingsworth designed commercial buildings, but is best known for his custom-made residences. Wealthy clients paid the bills, but Hollingsworth also remembered the less well-to-do.

“He believed good design should be affordable,” says Morrison.

For instance, Hollingsworth’s design for so-called neoteric houses, based on a four-foot by four-foot grid system, used plywood, an inexpensive building material at the time. Fourteen such houses were built. Hollingsworth’s original neoteric drawings are placed on his worktable for the show.

Hollingsworth enjoyed working with his hands. He built model airplanes in his youth and taught himself welding and watercolour painting. The show includes five wall sconces he made with a cutting torch and brazing iron for the University Club of Vancouver.

“He was very much a renaissance man,” says Morrison. “He really believed in the principles of organic Modernism and the idea that design is the whole package.”

Hollingsworth died in 2015 at age 98. ■

Fred Hollingsworth: Art of Architecture is on view at the West Vancouver Art Museum from Oct. 17 to Dec. 22, 2018.

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