Museum of Anthropology (1976)

Vancouver, British-Columbia, Canada

Picture Gallery

The Museum of Anthropology is situated on a promontory overlooking the Straight of Georgia and the North Shore mountains. The architect and landscape architect collaborated to design a landscape integrating structure and site, with meadows and mounds covered with native grasses and wild flowers familiar to Canada’s First Nations. This landscape is to be seen as an outdoor extension of the museum, paying tribute to the setting from which the artefacts on display originate.

Arthur Erickson oriented the building to catch views of the Pacific Ocean and the mountains beyond. Traditionally the Haida people built their villages and erected their totems at the water’s edge. A shell and shingle beach on a dry “inlet” in front of the building simulates the customary position in relation to the water. The ancient totem poles in the Great Hall of the museum relate to the shingle beach as well as the Haida village.

Visitors enter the site from the south through an ethno-botanical woodland walk featuring the plants of the forests of British Columbia, which are used by Canada’s native peoples for food, medicines, and implements. Ferns, huckleberry and salal, an evergreen shrub native to the West Coast, provide an understorey for the majestic hemlocks, cedars, and maples. Dramatically the forest opens to reveal the stunning architecture of the museum in a setting of rolling mounds with native grasses.

The setting is a venue for native dances, totem pole raising and other festivities connected with the program of the museum. It is also an unexpectedly wild landscape with long grasses, hills, and ocean views where people can connect with nature within the urban environment in all seasons.