Vancouver, BC, Canada
Award: 2025 AFBC Special Jury Award
Originally opened in 1976, the Museum of Anthropology was recognized by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada for its enduring excellence and national significance to Canadian architecture as one of the best works of the 20th century.
The focal point of the Museum was the high-ceilinged Great Hall, which housed massive totem poles. Large glass windows, towering up to forty feet in height, provided an unobstructed view and allowed the poles to be seen in daylight against a natural backdrop.
The project involved rehabilitation of multiple areas of the Museum’s envelope and a seismic structural upgrade of the Great Hall. A base isolation system—one of the first applied to a Canadian heritage building of this type—was installed beneath the Great Hall’s concrete columns, protecting both lives and artifacts while preserving the building’s original spatial clarity.
The intervention was approached with deep respect for the Museum’s cultural and architectural significance. Preserving the building’s original rhythm and material character was essential. The Museum remains a sublime testament to Arthur Erickson’s design philosophy which is founded on a deep understanding of the “function and meaning of architecture as an art of environmental context and of cultural expression, as something having more than sheer mechanistic utility, as something expressive of the human condition and the human spirit.”
Architect: Nick Milkovich Architects
Original Architect: Arthur Erickson Architects
Completed: 2024