Douglas Cardinal describes his creative process as inspired by
nature. From YouTube. Accepted by the School of Architecture at
the University of British Columbia in 1952, he studied there for
3 years. But it was the University of Texas School of
Architecture at Austin that provided the intellectually open,
yet rigorous, training he needed to develop the complex,
undulating architecture for which he is now internationally
acclaimed. He graduated with honours in 1963. Like many of the
renowned western Canadian architects developing during the
1950s, Douglas Cardinal sought to interpret the teachings of
European modernism by investigating a regional modification of
the International Style. He was particularly drawn to the
modernity of architects such as Hans Poelzig and Erich
Mendelsohn, and his mature work harmonizes an attraction to
Italian and Spanish baroque buildings with the expressionist arm
of European modern architecture that reached its ascendancy in
Germany just after the First World War. Cardinal was