Vancouver Art Gallery sees 14 proposals for new building design | Daily Hive

Vancouver Art Gallery receives 14 proposals for new building design

Construction work on the site of the future new Vancouver Art Gallery on March 13, 2024. (Kenneth Chan)

The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) has begun the process of reviewing over a dozen proposals outlining alternative design concepts for a brand-new gallery building.

A spokesperson for the VAG told Daily Hive Urbanized this week that all 14 Canadian architectural design firms invited to submit proposals have done so.

The deadline for submissions in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process was March 14, 2025. The RFP and invitations were issued in late January of this year.

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“The evaluation process is currently underway, and we have no further updates at this time,” stated the VAG.

Here is the full list of 14 Canadian architectural firms that have submitted a proposal for this new design competition, including some of the country’s most prominent architectural firms and nine companies that are headquartered or have a local office in Metro Vancouver:

Diamond Schmitt Architects (Vancouver)
Formline Architecture & Urbanism (West Vancouver)
Hariri Pontarini Architects (Toronto)
HCMA (Vancouver)
Henriquez Partners Architects (Vancouver)
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg KPMB (Toronto)
Michael Green Architecture MGA (Vancouver)
Office of Mcfarlane Biggar Architects + Designers (OMB) (Vancouver)
Patkau Architects Inc. (Vancouver)
Perkins&Will (Vancouver)
Revery Architecture (Vancouver)
Saucier+Perrotte Architectes (Montreal)
Teeple Architects (Toronto)
5468796 Architecture Inc. (Winnipeg)

These firms also have varying degrees of experience designing museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions.

The selected design will replace the long-established design by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. In late 2024, VAG announced it had parted ways with Herzog & de Meuron and cancelled their design, with the project instead starting fresh with a new design team.

It is unclear whether there could also be a change of scope/size of the project to help decrease its cost.

One of the companies participating in the RFP is Perkins&Will, which was the local architect of record for Herzog & de Meuron’s applications to the municipal government.

vancouver art gallery new building 2024 rendering

Cancelled design: 2024 revised artistic rendering of the new Vancouver Art Gallery building. (Herzog & de Meuron/Perkins&Will)

Although construction had already begun in March 2024 with site preparation and excavation work, the previous design by Herzog & de Meuron had incurred significant construction cost overruns — up by 50 per cent from $400 million to $600 million. These budget issues were first announced in August 2024, which also served to explain the long pause in construction inactivity.

As of March 2024, the VAG had raised $352 million toward their then-budgeted project of $400 million, which includes $350 million for design, planning, and construction costs and a $50 million endowment for the building’s operations upon completion.

No potential timeline for the recalibrated project has been established. But upon completion, the VAG would relocate to its brand new purpose-built building next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and fully vacate its longtime home of the heritage building — a former courthouse — at Robson Square. The heritage building is owned by the provincial government, with the municipal government holding the 100-year nominal lease for the VAG’s use. The lease expires in 2079.

According to VAG’s most recent annual report, it saw 184,000 visitors for the year-long period between July 2022 and June 2023, emerging out of the pandemic.

The new building replacing the Larwill parking lot will contribute to the eastward expansion of the core of downtown Vancouver, complementing The Post, recently built office towers, and other future planned developments.

Vancouver Art Gallery at the former courthouse building. (Kenneth Chan)

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