Ten months after announcing that, due to budget overages, the museum is parting ways with name-brand architects Herzog & de Meuron, the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) has selected two new firms to design its new building.
Vancouver-based Formline Architecture + Urbanism, founded by Alfred Waugh, will partner with Toronto-based KPMB Architects, founded by Bruce Kuwabara, on the new design. The museum’s release did not include any design details or an updated opening date. (The Herzog & de Meuron design was meant to be a vertical stacked tower with a woven copper façade.)
The location of the new building remains the same: Larwill Park, an undeveloped plot of public land in downtown Vancouver that the VAG has had rights to build on since 2013. The address, 181 West Georgia Street, is eight blocks from the museum’s current location, a former courthouse that it’s occupied for over 40 years.
Fourteen Canadian firms submitted proposals to the VAG, in order to satisfy a conditional gift of $71 million from Michael Audain, provided that the museum hire a Canadian architect, according to the Art Newspaper.
Both firms have plenty of experience building museums and cultural institutions in Canada. Formline Architecture + Urbanism’s portfolio includes several buildings for Indigenous organizations, like the Indigenous House at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler, B.C., and the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. KPMB Architects has designed several museums, among them the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Remai Modern in Saskatoon, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.