Bold Design Proposal for New VAG Features Stacked Wooden Boxes

by Marsha Lederman 
The Globe and Mail, Sep 29, 2015

(Image: The proposed design for a new Vancouver Art Gallery by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron will be wrapped in wood. Courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron, The Globe and Mail)

The outside-the-box conceptual design for a new Vancouver Art Gallery resembles a series of different-sized boxes stacked on top of each other – a building wrapped in wood that’s designed to stand out from its city of glass surroundings. The vertically oriented building is to be surrounded by a low-slung, street-accessible structure framing a large open-air courtyard. A key component of the proposal, the 40,000-square-foot courtyard is meant to become a cultural magnet and draw even non-paying customers to the site.

After working together on a master plan and proposed conceptual design for more than a year, officials from the VAG and Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron revealed their proposal publicly on Tuesday.

“We believe that this building must stand out because it’s a public building,” said lead architect Christine Binswanger during an interview Monday. “It wouldn’t make sense to try to blend in and make a silent box.” Read more…