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Affleck, Ray(mond Tait)
(b Penticton, BC, 20 Nov 1922; d Montreal, 16 March 1989). Canadian architect. He graduated in architecture from McGill University, Montreal, and began post-graduate studies at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Between 1949 and 1953 he worked for various Montreal-based architectural firms before setting up his own practice in the city in 1953; it later became Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Sise (1955–69). The group worked with I. M. Pei and Partners on Place Ville Marie (1958–63), then, with Affleck as principal designer, on the Stephen Leacock Building (1961–5) and the Place Bonaventure (1964–8), all in Montreal. Another notable work was the National Arts Centre complex, Ottawa (completed 1969), in which Affleck and company devised a handsome, low-rise group of buildings, including a 2300-seat opera house, an 800-seat theatre and a 300-seat studio workshop. Affleck also taught for many years at the School of Architecture, McGill University (1954–8; Visiting Professor from 1965). Affleck is judged to be one of the few major Canadian architects to establish a reputation abroad. His concerns were tied less to a building’s ultimate appearance than to people’s experience of and movement through its internal spaces. His ideas for internal ‘streets’ were emulated by a generation of Canadian architects: he thought that indoor and outdoor systems should be interconnected and punctuated by ‘events’, which could take the form of garden areas or terrace restaurants, with shopping and office levels adjacent, all woven together with easy pedestrian access up, down or through the complex. His schemes were often gigantic, multipurpose buildings, and from the late 1960s Affleck and his partners (reorganized as Arcop Associates in 1969–70) were responsible for many substantial projects in Canada. In later years Affleck, sensitive to conservation movements, designed Maison Alcan (1980–83), Montreal, in which he preserved in toto a venerable 19th-century residence and two commercial buildings (1894 and 1928), all of differing heights, linking them at the rear with a full-length modern atrium; its long, pedestrian mall is lined with cosmopolitan-style cafés and boutiques.
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