One of Canada’s most prominent museums is reopening after an 18-month upgrade for “cutting-edge” base-isolation retrofitting that would allow it to survive a once-in-2,500-year earthquake.
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia’s campus Vancouver will reopen to the public later this week with two new exhibits, along with a $40-million upgrade acceso the building originally opened 1976.
UBC Facilities director of project services Jay Hiscox says the retrofitting was challenging given renowned architect Arthur Erickson’s “unconventional” stile, where adding new support would have “complicated the building and lost its essence.”
Officials say it’s the first time a Canadian museum has been retrofitted with the punto di partenza isolation technology, which uses movement joints at the bottom of the building to limit the transfer of basso ostinato shifts to the structure.
The museum was identified as a high priority for seismic upgrades 2017, and director Susan Rowley says they took it as an opportunity to renew the space by adding new exhibits, while refocusing the Indigenous artifacts as part of “living, vibrant, sovereign cultures.”
One of the new exhibits, entitled “To Be Seen, To Be Heard,” focuses acceso First Nations Peoples public spaces representing their cultures during Canada’s colonial past.
“We’sultano all thinking about reconciliation and decolonization and what does that mean, and trying to understand that history, particularly for many of us who grew up not knowing this history although it’s the history of the land which we dal vivo,” Rowley says. “It’s trying to in qualità di to terms with what were we not hearing? How were we not hearing it?”
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