Breaking news in the New York Times:
The Vancouver Art Gallery has selected Herzog & de Meuron to design its new and expanded home in downtown Vancouver, the gallery announced on Tuesday. The new building, which doubles the museum’s current space, will be the Swiss architects’ first project in Canada.
Here are some of their galleries:
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Goetz Collection, Munich (1992)

Walker Art Center expansion, Minneapolis (2005)
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M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco (2005)
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Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands (2008)
Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami (2013)
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Galleries have three elements:
The Interior: How does it serve the art?
The Exterior: How does it work as a piece of architectural sculpture?
The Context: How does it relate to and serve the city in which it is built?
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For another example, look a block down from the Larwill Park site on which the new gallery will be built at Georgia and Cambie to a cultural centre of similar intent.
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This Moshe Safdie-designed structure is primarily a simple concrete box: that’s how it best serves the function of a library.
It is wrapped in a decorative exterior that makes it iconic.
And it is set in a block on the grid with its own urban-design criteria, down to the colour of the street lights and the design of the tree-grids. (Safdie actually objected to the planting of trees. Blocks the architecture, you see – and I fully expect the same debate will happen with the art gallery.)
Views will vary on how successfully the library does all of this (view away!), but that’s now where the debate will turn – that, and the design of the commercial tower on the other portion of the site that the City required as a condition when it allocated the block (unless the VAG can kill that off.)
One thing for sure: In a city which overuses the word “world-class,” these architects and this commission meet that description.
And in Madrid near the Prado and the Reina Sophia and the Thyssen, their Caixaforum: https://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/complete-works/201-225/201-caixaforum-madrid/IMAGE.html
Their buildings may well serve the art within, but i find them devoid of any redeeming features on the exterior for passing traffic, whatever form it takes. They seem
harsh and unwelcoming.
I saw the San Francisco example, meh (I did not go in though and for an art gallery that is important). The others seem like they would be hugely out of place in an urban Vancouver context (some might work in an area with lots of green space). That said lets see what they come up with before we worry too much.
They’ll need to be cautious, as the area around the Larwill Park site is already a dead zone during the days, with many large institutional uses, some of which do not function except in the evenings.
With an art gallery, there’s a huge potenial for multiple blank walls (even if prettied up) that could further deaden the neighbourhood.
I don’t mind the austere look, but I think that they will have to stoop to a little colour in our grey climate. I like the Tate Modern expansion and I love this:
http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=2703
Nice looking glass tower –
But in order to stand out in downtown Vancouver (and art works’ aversion to direct sunlight) – I suspect that the building won’t be clad in glass.
The biggest question will be how it hits the sidewalk and draws people in.
The most recent examples of big box design downtown are the Vancouver Convention Centre (which has big glass walls), the renovation of Sears for Nordstrom, the underground Costco, and the new Edgewater Casino. (VPL already mentioned above)
It’ll be interesting to see how it compares to the casino.
Ugly as sin.
Very harsh and Brutal without trees and street interface. Was recently in Melbourne and saw the great relationship between the National Gallery of Victoria which is boxy and imposing with St.Kilda Road which has lots of street trees and a large fountain between the two edges. The two spaces juxtapose each other beautifully.
These are all as bad as the old Eatons in Pacific Centre, with blank walls devoid of any engagement with the street. However it doesn’t really matter as I doubt the VAG will come anywhere near raising enough money from the private sector to get it built.
unimpressive. OK. Meh. Like Vancouver’s downtown. Unremarkable.
What makes Vancouver remarkable is its waterfront, seawall and English Bay oreintation, visible from downtown, UBC, Kits, N-Van, W-Van .. but not downtown itself 2 blocks from the water. It is rather average – at best !
I frankly strongly dislike all of the examples you’ve shown here. Too harsh, brutal, too many blank walls, too unwelcoming, too boxy, too bland. If they build the example from the Canary Islands or San Francisco I will probably wish upon every shooting star that the building simply falls down of its own volition or somebody blows it up.
The DeYoung Museum is simply a wonderful place for enjoying art. The way natural light is brought into the central space, the way circulation is handled, to the very logic of its parts in relation to the whole, all add up to a very enjoyable engagement with the art experience.
Our site is quite different from that sylvan park setting, but I look forward to seeing and, better yet, experiencing the result.
Terrible Starchitecture.
To clarify my above remark; these buildings by and large feature blank walls and an overall design that ignores their exterior and surrounding context. If they came into my planning office anonymously, they wouldn’t pass initial concept review. But just because they’re by “famous” architects we are supposed to fall over ourselves to have them build something like this?
The only place a building like this belongs is out in the wilderness as a stand-alone project. To put these things in an urban environment is a slap in the face to the residents of a city.