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Baker, Joseph
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1929-2015
History
Born in 1929, in England, he moved to Canada in 1952 and practiced his profession in Toronto and Montreal before being elected president of the Quebec order of architects in 1968. As an architect and as a teacher at McGill and Université Laval, Joseph Baker lived and spread the conviction that architecture must be done "in the street," closest to the people whose lives it can transform. He favoured conservation and rehabilitation of neglected, working-class Montreal neighbourhoods that were being threatened with wholesale demolition. His work to save Griffintown was documented in the 1972 National Film Board film, Griffintown. While Baker was director of Université Laval’s architecture school, he initiated the idea of moving the school from its modern building in a Quebec City suburb to a historically-significant but vacant former seminary in Quebec’s old quarter.
Besides being a world traveller, a cyclist and marathon runner, Baker also had a flare for writing. Bumbaru noted that Baker penned many well-written letters in local French- and English-language newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette, about different causes.
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Sources
Gyulai, Linda. "Obituary: Joseph Baker a pioneer of "community" architecture." Montreal Gazette. 2016. https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/obituary-montreal-mourns-a-pioneer-of-community-architecture.