The Globe and Mail

Several years ago, a family member's account of the life and work of a designer of buildings — the very personal documentary film My Architect — was a surprise hit. It's hard to say what was behind this rare case of architectural biography finding a wide audience. Was it the product of the film's gorgeous photography of Louis Kahn's primal creations in brick and concrete, Bangladesh's National Assembly buildings among them. Or was it the spicy details of writer-director Nathaniel Kahn's quest for the father he never knew (the film-maker was the issue of a long-time secret affair, the Philadelphia architect dying when he was young.) Most likely, interest in My Architect was sparked by melodrama and monuments both. There are few spicy details in Finding A Good Fit: The Life and Work of Architect Rand Iredale. There are, however, an enormous range of other details in the 376 over-sized pages of this just-published book from Vancouver's Blue ImPrint Publishers — the wordiest volume ever produced on a Canadian architect. These details include a full page reproduction of the UBC graduate's 1962 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada membership parchment, a detailed chronology from online sources of every major building at Simon Fraser University (his firm was involved in 6 of the 38 listed), folios of snapshots of Gulf Island family vacations, and seemingly verbatim transcriptions of reminiscences from former employees.