The Globe and Mail

Once in a while, a reminder of modernism's awesome reach as an architectural movement — into practically every city on the globe — is in order. I'll never forget when I caught sight of a spectacular yet anonymous flat-roofed, curtain-walled home while driving through Cumberland, Md., on the way to see Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater house a few years ago. Similarly, I recently viewed some modern homes built in the Briarcliffe section of Ottawa's Rothwell Heights in the early sixties. I had arranged for Carleton University architecture professor Janine Debanné to take me on a tour of the neighbourhood, on which she's currently preparing a paper for publication. "Ottawa did have this little moment of experimental, progressive architecture," she says as we begin our walk around the hilly, forested neighbourhood near the southern banks of the Ottawa River, a 10-minute drive from the downtown core. "It was very brief and it was thanks to a confluence of circumstances."