To mark the 1989 opening of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, this book documents the building designed for a unique institution: a museum and study center whose collection of architectural books, prints and drawings, photographs, and archives is one of the finest in the world. The essays and illustrations reveal the potential of a museum of architecture as a statement: about the nature of the works it collects and exhibits; about its role in the life of a culture or a city; about architecture itself. The new CCA is not only a work of architecture but also an addition to the public landscape of one of North America's historic cities. It is also a work of restoration: it incorporates the Shaughnessy House, one of Montreal's distinctive 19th-century graystone buildings. The new building's synthesis of classicism and modernism reflects the influence of history and place as well as the predilections of its architect and consulting architect, Peter Rose and Phyllis Lambert. Larry Richards is an architect in Toronto and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. A publication of the Centre Canadien d'Architecture/ Canadian Centre for Architecture. Distributed by The MIT Press.