On Site review started in 2000 as a response to the atomisation of architectural discussion in Canada (one never really knows much about what is happening in other parts of the country) and to include the work that Canadian architects do outside the country that we rarely hear about.

Over the years it developed into a print venue where a wide geography of architects, designers, urbanists and artists wrote about what interested them. On Site review never felt, and still doesn't feel, that one has to be either a star, or living and working in Toronto or Beijing, or well-connected to cool-hunters to be published in a Canadian architectural journal — we have a big country, we need a far-ranging magazine and this is On Site review.

On Site review is editorially loose. This is not sloppiness, but an intentional policy. It comes from the intense boredom I always felt at the intractable and interminable philosophical arguments about architecture that could prove, by rules, that how things must be – logical, rigorous and controllable. Looseness is the realm of possibility. It accepts contingency, provisionality, failure and impulse. This seems a good thing, given this is how our lives generally proceed.

:: Stephanie White, editor ::