Arthur Erickson’s Museum of Anthropology at UBC has been given a brand new lease of life in Vancouver

The reopening final month of Arthur Erickson’s 1976 Museum of Anthropology on what would have been the prolific architect’s a hundredth birthday, calls to thoughts a Japanese custom.

As a meditation on the thought of impermanence, the Shikinen Sengu divine palace inside the 2000-year-old Ise-Jingu Shinto shrine is demolished each 20 years after which rebuilt to the identical dimensions however on an alternate website inside the precinct. In an identical vein, Erickson’s modernist monument and Canada’s largest educating museum has been reincarnated – after an 18-month closure for a $60 million seismic improve – with new aesthetic and architectural life.

Tour the refreshed Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Vancouver

This was each an architectural and curatorial resurrection. New seismic security requirements meant that Erickson’s iconic Nice Corridor needed to be successfully destroyed and rebuilt.

The constructing’s choreography mirrors the entire course of. Now as one walks by the darkish canal of the east-facing entranceway that extends into the hovering Nice Corridor embracing the Western horizon, there’s a palpable sense of rebirth.

However main a tour of the constructing, long-time Erickson affiliate Nick Milkovich who labored on the unique constructing and was tasked with its reconstruction stated: ‘If I did my job effectively, you received’t discover any distinction.’ Certainly, the modifications are seamless and delicate, however vital.

The brand new architectural and curatorial imaginative and prescient – one which has added to the everlasting exhibition 50 new artefacts and signage that contextualises the objects on show when it comes to cultural genocide and up to date discourse within the discipline and past – are of a chunk with the unique. The Nice Corridor was demolished and rebuilt with a precast columns and beam construction sitting on a cast-in-place concrete slab, thickened underneath the columns, all of which rests on isolators inside the crawl area.

The previous tempered glass, which might have shattered immediately in an earthquake, has been changed by stronger, laminated sheets with UV safety. Plates of glass are cantilevered from the concrete columns and are fastened to a metal rod suspended from the channel beam, permitting them to maneuver in live performance with the motion of the construction. Now, ‘they will dance with the constructing,’ says Milkovich. The brand new configuration of glass, woven collectively by metal, lends a way of structure as textile artwork.

Now there’s an excellent clearer sense of the constructing’s connection to the land – and, if one goes deeper, a clearer view of the settler/patron’s place inside the museum. With its cleaner, brighter transparency and new concrete columns, there’s a higher articulation of Erickson’s authentic intent.

The Museum of Anthropology – half Shinto shrine, half cathedral, half longhouse – is a temple to studying. Its design hopes to transcend the colonial context of the museum, shifting from the darkened entranceway by to the good corridor, a spot birthing mild. Views of water and mountains beckon us right into a way forward for reconciliation.