The Canadian War Museum

Country Canada
City Ottawa
Customer Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation
Surface area 40,800 m²
Year 2005

Dedicated to the commemoration and preservation of Canada's military history, the museum is designed around the notion of regeneration.

The New Canadian War Museum emerges from the bank of the Ottawa River, rising eastward to engage the cityscape and pay homage to the Parliamentary Precinct.

The building expresses the ambiguities of war and sacrifice, the profound attachment we have to land and site, and that intangible quality that is integral to our identity as Canadians. The one word that embodies the design concept meaning is ‘Regeneration’. This was inspired by stories of Canadian veterans, war poetry, and images found in photographs and paintings in the Canadian War Museum’s Beaverbrook Collection of War Art.

View of the interior stairs of the Canadian War Museum

In war, nature - comprising the land and the human spirit nurtured thereon - is ravaged and seemingly destroyed. Miraculously and somehow inevitably, however, nature survives and regenerates as the power of life prevails. The overall expression of the building is horizontal, with a rooftop of wild grass. One can imagine peeling back this protective cover to reveal the interior spaces: A complex system of tilting planes that intersect with one another lending to a sense of disorientation from within. The landscape overlay is evidence of the healing power of time and nature: land fusing with ruin in a slow process of regeneration and hybridization.

Regeneration embodies the sequences of devastation, survival, rebirth, adaptation and life. It is this process of regeneration and healing that nourishes and rekindles human hope, faith and courage.