Archinect - News

Protesters in Canada have toppled monuments to Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II

2021-07-06T21:21:00-04:00

Two statues of queens on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature were pulled down Thursday during a rally aimed at replacing Canada Day celebrations with actions in memory of hundreds of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at residential schools across the country. [...] The grounds were the destination of an Every Child Matters walk in Winnipeg on Canada Day afternoon to protest the fallout of Canada's residential schools system.

The demonstrators were part of a Canada Day protest meant to draw attention to issues surrounding the forced removal and integration of 150,000 indigenous school children begun during Victoria's rule of the former UK Dominion. 6,000 of the children are reported to have died, and the recent discovery of the remains of 215 in an unmarked grave at a site near Kamloops in British Columbia has renewed calls for the observance of the holiday to be canceled.

Similar scenes have played out throughout the US and UK recently in light of the George Floyd protests, Charlottesville, and other events that have caused a sea change in societies grappling with their own ugly histories of racism and colonization.

Thousands of people attended the demonstrations in Manitoba's capital, Winnipeg. More details on the protest can be found at artnet.

Michael Maltzan Looks to Inuit Art as Inspiration for a Canadian Museum Project

2021-03-27T13:28:00-04:00

It was a trip to the Arctic that gave a Los Angeles-based architect the inspiration for the new 36,000 sqft expansion of the Winnipeg Art Gallery opening this weekend in the nation's seventh-largest city.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Michael Maltzan Architecture with associate Cibinel Architecture. Photo Lindsay Reid.

Michael Maltzan's design for Qaumajuq, a center for Inuit art almost a decade in the making sprang out of an excursion he took in 2013 with the museum's director Stephen Borys.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Photo by Lindsay Reid.

After being tapped the year before for the design and completion of the IAC, Maltzan began studying both the artistic traditions and topographies endemic to the Inuit people in areas hundreds of miles to the north.

Qaumajuq, the Inuit art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Photo by Lindsay Reid.

“It changed everything,” Borys told the New York Times. “When he got back to L.A., Micha...

Inside Winnipeg's growing Indigenous design scene

2020-06-22T16:00:00-04:00

As American architecture firms and institutions continue to grapple with inadequate levels of diversity and inclusion, Canadian groups are highlighting an increased willingness to highlight and support the work of Indigenous designers.

A recent CBC article highlights the Brook McIlroy Indigenous Design Studio, a focus within the Winnipeg, Canada-based practice that engages with Indigenous communities and worldviews as a part of its overarching ethos. The firm, according to the architects, positions Indigenous designers to lead "co-creation teams with Canadian professionals whose families have come from all over the world," and has worked to nurture Indigenous design talent for over a decade.

Previously on Archinect: "GSD students launch Harvard Indigenous Design Collective." Photo courtesy of Wikimedia user Gunnar Klack.

Brook McIlroy senior associate, Ryan Gorrie, who is Anishinaabeg from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek (Sand Point First Nation on Lake Nipigon) region tells CBC, ...

A glimpse of the Warming Huts 2017 winning designs

2016-11-10T13:21:00-05:00

Recently concluding its 2017 edition, architects got to submit their most innovative designs for a temporary winter-hut installation. Once the winners are selected, they travel to Winnipeg near the end of January to bring their warming huts to life, and for all to enjoy during the winter months.

Winnipeg locals will get to see the latest winning designs of the highly anticipated Warming Huts Art + Architecture Competition next January, in time for the winter season. The 2017 edition recently concluded with three winners, a special invited installation by esteemed London-based artist Anish Kapoor, and another installation designed by local high-school student Sean Kohli from Nelson McIntyre Collegiate. Get a glimpse of the entries below.

Winner: “Greetings From Bubble Beach” by Team 888 from Chicago, Illinois

Winner: “Ice Lantern” by Lisa Tondino, Alexandra Bolen, Mathew Rodrigues & Drew Klassen from Nova Scotia, Canada

Winner: “Open Border” by Joyce de Grauw & Paul van den Berg from Rotterdam, Netherlands

2017 Additional installation: “On The Rails” by Sean Kohli, student at Nelson McIntyre Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba

Invited designer: “Stackhouse” by Anish Kapoor

More details on Bustler.

Previously:

"The Hole Idea" celebrates the simple joys of creating "spontaneous architect...

Lessons learned: The complex realities when designing communal social housing

2016-01-05T15:18:00-05:00

What went wrong in Winnipeg was not just about architecture, and 5468796 were stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation. The pulling out of government support to make Centre Village an actual co-operative changed the [project's direction]...'It’s time to get the peanut butter off our fingers,' said Ross McGowan, former chief executive and president of CentreVenture...He admits that a failure to understand the needs of the community took a considerable toll on the project.

Despite good intentions to help families in need, perhaps the worst nightmare an architect can face when designing affordable housing is realizing that the project — which would of course already be fully built — doesn't meet the actual demands of the community, and then some. That's basically what happened to the 5468796 architecture-designed Centre Village project in Winnipeg.

More about affordable housing on Archinect:

California to decrease parking requirements for affordable housing

Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Tatiana Bilbao's solution to Mexico's housing shortage

Up to 50% of all renting London households are living in poverty

The promising affordable housing of Hunters Point South

Poor Doors of Perception: discriminatory design, collapsing balconies, and virtual realities on Archinect Sessions #36

"The Hole Idea" celebrates the simple joys of creating "spontaneous architecture"

2015-04-01T15:16:00-04:00

Architectural design can be as playful as a child's imagination and still be taken seriously. Coated in a sunny yellow and candy-colored circular openings, "The Hole Idea -- Now in Technicolor" in Winnipeg is a snow tunnel that may seem like a kids-only zone at first glance, but is an engaging installation that can spark the curiosity of anyone who is trudging by in the snow. Since it was first installed in January after winning the popular Warming Huts 2015 competition, The Hole Idea has attracted visitors of all ages. The project's success continues with its recent win of an Ontario Association Of Architects Award.

Designed by Toronto-based Weiss Architecture + Urbanism, the playful concept for The Hole Idea -- which was named after a 1955 Looney Tune animation of the same name -- evokes childhood memories of Saturday morning cartoons, colorful playgrounds, and building snow forts.

The firm worked alongside Blackwell Engineering and the Canada Culvert fabrication team to complete th...

Winners of Warming Huts v.2015

2014-11-26T18:51:00-05:00

The Warming Huts competition is back with its 2015 edition! The blind jury sifted through over 100 submissions from around the world for this season's most creative warming huts. The top three winning designs will be constructed at the Red River Mutual Rivertrail in Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. This year's competition awarded two Shelter category winners and one Installation winner.

(Above) SHELTER WINNER: This Big by Tina Soli & Luca Roncoroni from Dorebak Akershus, NORWAY

SHELTER WINNER: "The Hole Idea by Weiss Architecture & Urbanism Limited from Toronto, CANADA

INSTALLATION WINNER: Recycling Words by KANVA, from Montreal, CANADA

For more project details and other noted submissions, head over to Bustler.

Dispatches from 5468796 Architecture's Table for Twelve | Rotterdam

2013-12-06T15:42:00-05:00

Archinect is delighted to present 5468796 Architecture's travelogue for their award-winning research project, Table for Twelve. The Winnipeg-based firm received the 2013 Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture from the Canada Council for the Arts, awarded to emerging Canadian architects with outstanding artistic potential. The $50,000 prize will support the firm’s worldwide travels to both strengthen their skills and expand their presence within the international architectural community.

5468796’s Table for Twelve will hold dinner parties at architectural epicenters around the world, in the hopes that picking the brains of local talent will help them identify the drivers behind a strong design culture. Archinect plays host to their global dispatches through this travel blog, updated upon each city’s dinner.

From 5468796:

DINNER:

The Trip

5468796 Architecture’s Johanna Hurme, Ken Borton and Sean Radford recollect on their travels for the second leg of their Table for Tw...

Second House First exhibition currently at the RAW Gallery, Winnipeg

2013-10-15T14:17:00-04:00

Check out the "Second House First" exhibition, currently at the RAW Gallery of Architecture and Design in Winnipeg, Canada until Oct. 27, 2013. Second House First gives an in-depth look into the cottages and cabins that surround Lake Manitoba in Manitoba, Canada. The exhibition explores and questions the growing differences between the cabin and the suburban house as well as the contrasting lifestyles of its residents.

Contributors include Conrad Koslowsky (Roz Barr Architects); Frederik Bo Bojesen, (Herzog & de Meuron); Scrap Marshall, (UCLA AUD); Yannick Guillen, (YG), and Lisa Stinner-Kun (University Of Manitoba).

Warming Huts v.2013 - Five Winners Selected

2012-12-04T13:52:00-05:00

Warming Huts: An Art + Architecture Competition on Ice has unveiled the five winning projects of its 2013 edition. Like in previous winters, the selected huts will be built in early January on site and placed on the Assiniboine Credit Union River Trail in Winnipeg, Canada - the longest naturally frozen skating trail in the world.

Michael Maltzan selected to design Inuit Art and Learning Centre for WAG

2012-11-28T13:58:00-05:00

The award-winning American architect Michael Maltzan has been selected to design the Inuit Art and Learning Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The Centre will house both the WAG’s celebrated collection of contemporary Inuit art, the largest of its kind in the world, and the Studio Art and Learning programs. Michael Maltzan will be the Prime and Design Architect for this historic project, and supporting his team will be Cibinel Architects, Ltd, led by principal George Cibinel, acting as the Associate and Technical Architect in Winnipeg.

This past August, 65 prospective architectural teams from 15 countries responded to the Call for Expressions of Interest for the IALC project. In September, the architect selection committee narrowed it down to six finalists who submitted expanded proposals and were interviewed last month. The selection committee was unanimous in choosing Michael Maltzan as the winning architect, and this recommendation subsequently received overwhelming approval...

Local architects power Winnipeg’s reinvigorated design

2012-10-19T20:32:00-04:00

Like the meeting of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, there’s a compelling confluence of urban activists standing next to each other on the sidewalk of Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg. To my right is a group of First Nations flood evacuees protesting (politely) against cuts to their daily living allowance. To my left, below the gleaming, mirror-polished aluminum balconies of the Avenue on Portage mixed-use development...

ROPE pavilion by KNEstudio

2012-08-01T18:23:00-04:00

Last week on Bustler, we published the two winning projects in the international NEXT LANDMARK Contest. The project ROPE pavilion, winner in the category "First Work", was also selected as the favorite entry in Winnipeg's 2012 Warming Huts Art + Architecture Competition earlier this year. The team that designed and built the pavilion was led by architect Kevin Erickson of New York firm KNEstudio.

Very cool: Warming-hut designs win big at The Forks

2012-01-29T00:10:00-05:00

Three huts were chosen from an open design competition with the winning designs coming from the Czech Republic, Norway and New York. A fourth was chosen from student submissions at the University of Manitoba while the fifth was designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry.

Warming Huts Competition: „POLAR HEN“ by mjölk architekti

2011-12-21T15:18:00-05:00

Czech firm mjölk architekti has shared with us their fascinating proposal "POLAR HEN" which was - under the title "ICE PILLOWS" - just recently named one of the five winners in the internationally acclaimed Warming Huts v.2011, An Art +Architecture Competition on Ice (...with one of the other four winners being Frank Gehry!). For only one winter, the five winning huts will be created and placed on the frozen Assiniboine River in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Conversion seldom gets any better than this.

2011-11-07T20:24:00-05:00

In Centre Village and YouCube, 5468796 has displayed fine mastery of geometry and the planning of graceful, efficient urban communities. But in Avenue + Hample, it has successfully tackled the harder jobs of bringing dead buildings back to life

John Bentley Mays reviews recent work of , the award-winning Winnipeg office known as 5468796 Architecture for the Globe and Mail. He finds that the office has brought striking, fresh reinterpretations of classical European modernism to their home town.

If you haven't already (or just for a reminder) check out the earlier Archinect UpStarts: 5468796 Architecture feature, where Will Galloway interviewed, two of the principals, Sasa Radulovic and Johanna Hurme, whom he went to grad school with.