Predock's design wins

KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR

A winning design has been chosen for the Canadian Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg. The blueprints submitted by Albuquerque, N.M., architect Antoine Predock will be transformed into a $243 million glass dome in the city's downtown area, with an expected 300,000 visitors a year.

Funding will come from municipal, provincial and federal sources, as well as from the Asper Foundation. The museum was the brainchild of the late media magnate Izzy Asper. The longtime Winnipegger saw the idea as a chance for Canada to lead the way in the promotion of human rights. He noted that there was no human rights museum in existence anywhere in the world.

A call for design proposals was sent out after Asper's death in October 2003. Sixty-two architecture firms from 21 countries responded. Predock's team was one of three shortlisted. His winning bid was announced at a public ceremony in Winnipeg April 15. In an article published in Winnipeg's Jewish Post and News, members of the city's Jewish community in attendance at the event expressed their support for the new museum.

Sybil Plattner called it a project "for all mankind." Added Miriam Bronstein, music director for the Gray Academy of Jewish Education: "I felt such a surge of pride. I'm thrilled and delighted that this is happening here."

Supporters hope that the museum will put Winnipeg on the architectural map and that it will be as widely admired as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Predock's design resembles a giant glass castle, with the swirling Tower of Hope emerging from its centre. According to a statement on the museum's website, the tower "is a beacon for humanity" that speaks to a "life-affirming hope for positive changes." The museum also features the Garden of Contemplation and a meandering exhibition space that "parallels an epic journey through life."

On his website, Predock credits his involvement with modern dance and the "songlines" mapped across the landscape by Aboriginal Australians as inspiration for his work. "Architecture," he writes, "is a fascinating journey towards the unexpected." The National Palace Museum in Taiwan is among Predock's other recent commissions.

The human rights museum will include exhibits on the Holocaust, First Nations peoples and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and will be "a place for Canada' s varied multicultural communities to document their histories [so we can] learn, benefit and improve in the area of human rights."

The exhibits will be designed by Ralph Applebaum, whose many commissions include the Clinton presidential library.

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