Canadian Museum of History
Douglas Cardinal · Gatineau, Canada · 1989
Douglas Cardinal shaped the Canadian Museum of History as a series of flowing stone-clad forms facing the Ottawa River and Parliament Hill. Curving walls, ramps and rooflines reject rectilinear institutional monumentality in favor of a continuous organic geometry associated with landscape and erosion. The Grand Hall opens toward the river through a broad glazed wall and provides a monumental setting for Indigenous architectural and cultural works. The present Gatineau building opened in 1989 and remains Cardinal’s best-known public project.