HERZOG & DE MEURON TO DESIGN VANCOUVER ART GALLERY

Herzog & de Meuron have been commissioned to design the new Vancouver Art Gallery. The firm was the unanimous choice from a short-list of five, which also included Toronto’s KPMB Architects; Tokyo’s SANAA; and New York-based firms Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, reports Marsha Lederman of The Globe and Mail. The museum will span approximately three hundred thousand square feet—double the capacity of the current facility, which is located a few blocks away from the site where the new building is slated to be built. An additional $150 million needs to be raised from the federal and provincial governments by the end of April 2015, the same time conceptual designs are expected to be completed. At that point the institution will begin its public capital campaign. Said director Kathleen Bartels on the gallery’s selection: “They’re artists’ architects. They understand artists. They’ve worked with artists for their entire professional career and they know what that means.”