The Alberta Association of Architects, The Saskatchewan Association of Architects and The Manitoba Association of Architects have announced with winners of the 2022 Prairie Design Awards, This tri-provincial collaboration has been recognizing design excellence since its inauguration in 2000. Two types of awards may be awarded: Award of Excellence and Award of Merit. This year marked the […]
Letting the Light Out: Qaumajuq, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Letting the Light Out: Qaumajuq, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Architect and educator Lawrence Bird considers Qaumajuq’s rippling impact on its urban surroundings.
By
PHOTOS Lindsey Reid
A billowing white building, like an icy cloud, has descended on the Prairie landscape. Mooring itself to an urban site, it reflects the long, glancing sunlight of the Prairie while also catching another kind of light: the midnight sun of Canada’s North.
In architect Michael Maltzan’s words, the North’s cultural and physical geography is one of “ineffable qualities […] where the water shimmers away and melds with the sky.” For Maltzan, that geography enjoys a specific “quality of light […] that animates all the forms there.”