Climate and Geography
Canada's geography is highly diverse, and there are thus important differences in architecture. In most of Canada building materials are abundant, and the price of lumber and stone are low. The major exception are the prairie and the far north, where wood is in short supply. In the far north transportation costs of all goods are extremely high, and any construction project is expensive.
For the most part Canada is secure from major natural disasters that affect the architecture of other nations. However, the Canadian climate needs to be taken into account for every structure. All buildings need to be well insulated to protect their inhabitants against the extreme cold of the long winters. Buildings must be designed to survive the repeated cycle of freezing and thawing that can shatter stone and move buildings off their foundations. In most of Canada, buildings must also be able to survive the heavy weight of snow, which can collapse certain structures. In coastal British Columbia, the region's heavy rainfall is a factor in weatherproofing buildings, and ignoring it can have expensive consequences.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Architecture
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or geography:
“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)