Dan Hanganu ─ Works 1981-2015

This long overdue account of an important contribution to architectural design and discourse examines forty years of practice with detailed documents of major award-winning projects and an overview of the Bulgarian-born Canadian architect’s career. Drawing on rationalist, constructivist, and classical discourses, Hanganu has shaped the architectural synthesis between European architectural history and Canadian culture and geographic conditions with a defining contribution to architecture that has influenced generations of architects. Essays and accompanying texts explore Hanganu’s background and approach to architecture and underline issues that reach into the soul of his projects. These are important especially in the face of the tendency to present works of architecture as consumable products, an unfortunate trend that makes one an outsider to the inner world of architecture, its challenges and motivations. Hanganu’s body of work embodies such inner workings. The aim of this book is to urge an appreciation of Hanganu’s work at that level and to impart an understanding of that inner world; the origin of form and the path of design for every project. Kenneth Frampton’s essay guides the search for such understanding, in addition to defining the work in a clear historical context.

Essy Baniassad is Professor, School of Architecture, University of Botswana and adjunct professor, School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Rocco: Being Chinese in Architecture: Recent Works (MCCM Creations 2004), and Shim-Sutcliffe: The Passage of Time (Dalhousie Architectural Press 2014).Kenneth Frampton is the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of, notably, A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form (Lars Muller 2015) and Modern Architecture: A Critical History (Thames & Hudson 2007.