Art Gallery of Nova Scotia - Competition

The new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) will be an anti-institution: an open and democratic place catalyzing new currents of cultural life at the Halifax waterfront; a radically inclusive hub where creative engagement engenders both a welcoming and comfortable space for all to convene, and a setting in which the most challenging contemporary issues may be confronted through the medium of art.

1. All Orientations

2. Continuous Public Realm

To accommodate the flow of visitors coming to the AGNS from multiple directions, the Salter Block will remain fully porous to its surroundings, extending uninterrupted from city to water and merging with an extensive network of public spaces and amenities along the Downtown Halifax Waterfront. Mobile galleries and other community initiatives will expand the Museum’s reach well beyond its site.

5. Education Everywhere

Community engagement will be ubiquitous at AGNS, inviting the public to participate in formal and informal hands-on learning inside and out, including encounters with artists-in residence at the Innovation Ateliers, classes in the Education Studios, artist talks and performances in the Lecture Theatre, deep dives into the collection in the Gallery Interstitials, outdoor sculpturemaking in the Art Yard, and maritime-focused art-making and events on the Art Barge.

To provide uninterrupted public access and programming at street level and to protect priceless artworks from coastal flooding associated with climate change, the building will engage the ground as minimally as possible by lifting the AGNS galleries up to an elevated level with ample and fully accessible vertical connections between.

6. Contemporary Classic

Architecture is slow, geo-fixed and frozen in time from the moment of its realization; whereas the Fine Arts are nimble and in a state of constant flux. The new AGNS building must always appear fresh despite the perpetual change of its internal artistic content—a soft icon on the Halifax waterfront that is supple yet strong, timeless but entirely relevant.

Art

To achieve the building’s ‘Light Touch,’ tree structures lift the Village of Galleries on a thin platform, creating an open and contiguous public realm from city to sea at grade. The Gallery platform is a lifted second ground interconnected with the public ground below through a central Tree Stair/ atrium. The education, group, and convening spaces, in addition to art care and administration, are at an inset mezzanine level, sculpturally supported around the tree columns and visually connected to the ground level. This strategy of layering programs prioritizes public access and intelligent approaches to sustainable operations and resiliency. The entrance level is set above the 100-year predicted storm surge and wave run-up elevation; all spaces where art, precious materials, mission critical systems and equipment are located at floor levels above; and ticketed art exhibition spaces (Class-A) are confined to a single level at the top. Education and Public Programs internally connect public spaces throughout the Museum,

with iconic outward facing spaces such as the lecture hall projecting the mission of engagement and education. Publicly accessible outdoor spaces also burrow into the building, bottom to top, with a second level outdoor courtyard and gallery level public terrace overlooking water, both accessible to unticketed visitors.

Outwardly, the AGNS is a building rooted in place. The tamarack cladding on the Village of Galleries and its platform are native to Nova Scotia and weather to a warm, rich gray sympathetic with the boardwalk and harbour. The variety in type and size of the galleries in the village create an antiinstitutional sense of scale for the building as whole. The dark steel tree columns and glazing below create a sense of lightness and inviting openness, while promoting visual connection outward to the city and the water. Stone paving and planting at the Garden Court create seamless linkages to the public realm from inside to outside, encouraging the public to freely pass through the site.

Tree Structure + Main Stair

Mezzanine Continuous Public Realm

View from Boardwalk looking Southwest

Ground Level

Lobby, Cafe, Store, Visitor Services

The ground floor Foyer is an urban Living Room, inviting and porous to arrival in all directions. The exterior stone paving flows continuously into the interior, reinforcing continuity of the public realm from outside to inside through its four points of entry: from Salter Street north, Lower Water Street west, the Boardwalk east, and to the Art Yard south. The Foyer is activated day and night by its public programs: The Gallery Shop occupies the northwestern Lower Water Street corner, and the Café at the northeast Salter Street corner, both animating the Foyer inwardly as well as reaching out to the public realm; the glass-enclosed Lecture Theatre sits at the southeast corner, with the waterfront view as a backdrop for its presentation wall; the Innovation Ateliers are located at the northern entrance, putting art-making on display as a first encounter. At the heart of the Foyer is a dramatic central tree column surrounded by a dynamic public stair--directly adjacent to the public elevators, this sculptural structure is skylit from above and immediately shows the way up to education, group, and exhibitions programs. Information about the AGNS, kiosk ticketing, coat check and amenities are intuitively located by this tree-stair at the convergence of all public flows in the Foyer. Throughout are located comfortable furniture groupings that invite people to hangout without tickets. To the south west corner, the loading docks for both Art and service enter off of Lower Water Street.

Salter Street Entry

Education, Multi-Purpose, Auditorium, Admin, Collections Care

At the second floor mezzanine level, education, group and convening activities shape the public experience. Above the Salter Street entrance, the education studios project like a marquee, putting their activities on display to the plaza below. Around these spaces cluster seminar, meeting and support rooms, all highly visible and accessible to the Foyer below. The Group Orientation area, located adjacent to the education spaces and away from the hustle and bustle of the lobby, will provide a flexible space for school and other groups to congregate, eat and connect with museum staff before participating in group art making classes or touring the galleries upstairs. Adjacent spaces providing ample furniture storage will enable this gathering space to double as an event pre-function space for the convening spaces a found at this level. To the east the large Multi-purpose room with its outdoor terrace and the upper level of the Lecture Theatre flank the outdoor garden courtyard, both looking out onto the water. The courtyard will provide additional pre and postfunction spaces weather permitting. Beyond the Group area to the west is the Administrative suite, and spaces of art care and storage with windows permitting public glimpses in.

Main Stair

AGNS Studios Lecture Theatre

Multi-purpose Room

View from Waterfront looking Southwest

Galleries & Exhibition Storage

Above this education level, the soaring tree stair and elevators arrive at the gallery level. The central hall has a framed aperture to the sky above the arrival stair, a wash of daylight at the gallery walls from a perimeter clerestory, and to the east a view down into the garden court. At its heart, a series of smaller seating balconies look over the opening down to the Foyer. A Village of Galleries— varied spaces with diverse attributes, with unique connections to their surroundings and sense of place--surround the central hall in two wings: the east wing, Collections, with seven galleries of different areas, shapes, and heights; at the west wing are the four Temporary galleries, along with education gallery and black box. The Maud Lewis gallery presenting her house has a large picture window to the water, putting it on public display. Among the Collections galleries are presentation rooms for more intimate display of art, as well as interstitial pause spaces with views or access to the exterior. Two collections galleries have special ceiling oculi, presenting different views of the northern sky. Within the Temporary galleries, two share sawtooth skylights producing continuous and diffuse overhead daylight; one is extra tall with corner windows opening views to the city; and the last has access to the northeast sculpture terrace. Finally, adjacent to the art lift art the Temporary collections storage, glazed and opening the view to art in its pre-curated state.

Daylit Temporary Gallery

Maud Lewis Gallery

Atrium Black Box Gallery

Gallery Planning

Bespoke Flexibility

The AGNS’s new permanent and temporary galleries must satisfy current curatorial needs while also anticipate the needs of an unknown future. The design outcome will balance a generic yet hyperflexible strategy with an individualized but not overly-determined approach to produce a versatile collection of gallery spaces, each calibrated with unique attributes such as extra structural loading capacity, natural diffuse top-lighting, sound and light control, or views out to the water to support the collection today and tomorrow.

Pause

To combat museum fatigue and engage visitors in ways beyond the gallery setting, ‘palate cleansers’ between galleries provide spaces for rest, a view out to the surrounding waterfront, and a deeper dive into the collection through digital and analog interfaces in an informal setting.

Visible Back of House

The museum will further engage visitors with behind-the-scene glimpses into the processes of art preservation and curation at Collections Care Centre and visible storage rooms, while its full collection, stored off-site, can be accessed, studied, and experienced by the public via mixed reality interfaces integrated into Gallery Interstitial Spaces and Education Studios.

Sculpture Terrace

Temp. Gallery 1 Temp. Gallery 2 Temp. Gallery 3 Temp. Gallery 4

Perm. Gallery 5 Interstitial Interstitial

Black Box Gallery

Perm. Gallery 3

Edu. Gallery Gallery Lounge

Atrium

Visible Temp. Exhibition Storage

Open to Public Terrace Below

Perm. Gallery 4

Pres.

Inters.

Pres. Pres. Pres.

Perm. Gallery 3 Perm. Gallery 6

Perm. Gallery 3 Maud Lewis

Public Art Deck

Permanent Galleries Sequence Temporary Galleries Sequence

Sculpture Terrace Light-controlled Gallery Interstitial Space Interstitial Space Daylit XL Gallery Visible Storage Gallery with Picture Window Black Box Gallery

Public Art Loop

Fusing the AGNS program with its site, the Public Art Loop will extend from the Boardwalk right into the building from the east, creating a network of public outdoor spaces that can be accessed independently of the museum’s ticketed operations. A grand stair, aligned to the rake of the adjacent auditorium and complemented by a dedicated glass-enclosed public elevator will lead to a sky-lit elevated courtyard filled with local birch trees and a lush meadowed ground cover. This outdoor oasis will remain snow-free and comfortable year-round by transferring or rejecting heat, depending on the season, via a salt water geothermal heat exchange system. A stair will continue up from the courtyard up to a public deck at the Gallery, also serviced

Art Barge

Utilizing the site’s greatest asset -- the water -- the Art Barge will serve as a platform for sculpture and the performing arts that can travel throughout the harbour to reach regional coastal communities, extending the AGNS’s mission beyond its site. When docked at the Salter Block boardwalk, the Art Barge can double as a floating outdoor gallery for commissioned interactive sculptures as well as performance art and special public events. The Art Barge will symbolically reference the Salter Block’s maritime legacy, while providing a new cultural resource to the public. The vessel could be a basic refurbished barge acquired from nearby shipyards, currently sized as 22 meter long by 16.5 meters wide. To simplify regulatory oversight of this public venue, it could be designed as a self-propelled vessel able to alternate mooring sites on a frequency determined by maritime regulations. Docking at the boardwalk would be administered by DNS. Should AGNS and DNS choose to develop this special amenity beyond the initial scope of the project, the design team would develop a comprehensive programming, engineering and regulatory approvals process with the client leading to the acquisition, fit-out and commissioning of an appropriate base vessel as well as mooring accommodations along the boardwalk at the Salter Block.

Art Yard (Land)

Outdoor Studio

Stage

Overlook

Art Barge (Water)

Art Deck (Sky)

Courtyard

Public Art Terrace

Materials & Finishes

The material strategy for the new AGNS honours the layers of the site’s history – the original rock and sand shoreline, the steel and weathered wood of its industrial pier, and the boardwalk and gravel shore of today. The design for the building and its public realm recast this rich palate of the Halifax waterfront in a contemporary and refined way.

The basic finishes throughout the building are simple, robust, and honest about their materiality in wood, stone, steel, glass, and plaster. Our design proposal is built around this simple durable approach, while envisioning a number of enhancements for consideration, identified below, should the project budget support them.

The ‘Light Touch’ approach is the organizing force behind the material composition of the new building, the ground level will be visually transparent with a clear glass enclosure, with stone paving extending creating a sense of continuity from outside to inside— from the Salter Street and Lower Water Street Plazas into the AGNS lobby. The lobby will be an inviting and comfortable urban living room: it will feature inset ‘carpets’ of reclaimed wood flooring and seating areas with wool textile rugs and upholstery designed by local First Nations artists, creating a warm and welcoming environment for all visitors. Steel tree columns, protected in intumescent paint, give shape to the lobby and public areas. They will branch upward to support the lofted gallery platform, which is finished in locallysourced tamarack boards.

A Village of Galleries above will also be clad in tamarack: each volume will feature subtle variations to the wood finish and cladding approach, such as the shingled expression of the Oculus Galleries, potential enhancements incorporating lightly scorched appearance of the Black Box Gallery from the Shou Sugi Ban method of sealing the wood by firing, or varnished finish to the largest Temporary Gallery that incorporates titanium dioxide used to purify pollutants from the air. The gallery interiors will feature a variety of finishes, reinforcing their respective bespoke qualities. The Black Box Gallery will be finished in darkly painted walls and ceiling with a dark stained tamarack edge grain wood floor. The Temporary Galleries and gallery floors throughout will feature polished concrete floors with recommendation that the Oculus Galleries and the Maud Lewis Galleries may

feature tamarack wood plank flooring. Glass skylights in the Oculus Galleries and top-lit Temporary Gallery bring daylight down and view up to the sky.

The mezzanine level slab below will be clad in weathered gray engineered wood. Rough and tumble education spaces on this level and the Innovation Ateliers at grade will feature white gallery walls and highly durable

end grain wood floors, common in early 20th Century industrial buildings and factories. The Multi-purpose Room, Lecture Theatre Seminar and Meeting Rooms will feature durable wool carpet. Collections Care and other art movement and visible storage spaces will be finished with polished concrete floors. All publicly visible ceilings on the mezzanine and in double-height portions of the lobby propose featuring tamarack wood planks following

the ruled-surface geometries of the steel ‘tree column’ canopies extending from the branched steel beams.

The AGNS will feel very much of its place with a carefully honed palate of materials that will create a fresh and contemporary backdrop to the contents, activities and events of the museum and the redeveloped waterfront outside.

ATELIERS FLOOR END GRAIN WOOD

SPECIAL GALLERY CLADDING “SHOU SUGI BAN” WOOD TEMP. GALLERY CLADDING WOOD W/ TITANIUM DIOXIDE

GALLERIES

Integrated Sustainability Approach

The Halifax community has a strong 2050 plan for its sustainable future. Our design focuses on 4 primary initiatives that are part of that plan; Water, Health, Comfort, and Community.

Nova Scotia’s natural coastline gives it a unique character and beauty. Our design begins with restoring the native ecosystems that have evolved over millennia to work with the coastal forces of the Atlantic Ocean. This ecological strategy allows for the landscape design to absorb, adapt and evolve naturally over time and become truly resilient.

The museum is lifted above this natural landscape and organized in three layers that anticipate times of extreme weather. The public entry plazas are elevated such that the surrounding landscape absorbs and redirects the energy of a storm

critical to our design thinking. We have introduced new types of human infrastructure that actively participate with the natural environment to benefit the overall health of the community. The design integrates a Floating Gallery habitat that serves as a place to showcase emerging art as well as remediate oyster, mussel, and kelp colonies at the harbour’s edge. Then along the building perimeter, we have designed a living machine wetland that actively treats the grey water from the museum to provide a clean source of fresh water to the fragile brackish ecosystem.

Today, exterior cladding assemblies can be designed to develop mutually beneficial relationships between building conditioning systems and the natural environment. We have developed cladding assemblies specifically for this project that

evoke the feeling of a community of buildings, while at the same time providing a visitor experience that demonstrates the diversity of ways we are becoming smarter in how we build today.

Finally, our design aspires to become a catalyst in forming energy exchanges with its community as we consider initiative beyond the current scope of the project. We propose a passive thermal exchange with the harbour that anticipates future development on the adjacent site to share in this renewable resource and reduce the neighbourhood’s power consumption. We have also designed for

waste biofuel exchanges with the neighbourhood port industry to sustain comfort in outdoor site activities longer into the shoulder seasons. The waste-to-energy electricity will be used to create semi-conditioned buffer zones along the waterfront walkway and near building entrances.

In the end, this is what it’s all about, reducing our community’s overall footprint in order to slow the biospheric changes of our climate, so we have time to adapt and continue to enjoy the world around us.

Landscape Design

The landscape will create a varied experience from urban to waterfront, drawing from the natural history of the area and making the public mindful of the fact that this site was once water prior to the industrial expansion eastward from what is now Water Street. Central to the landscape vision is the transformation of the shoreline into a seminatural edge, pushed and pulled along its length to produce fingers of land alternating with inlets of water transitioning into beach and salt marsh. This restored semi-natural coastal edge will provide a variety of experiences, allowing visitors access and views to this dynamic waterfront that recalls its indigenous past prior to the landfill that created the industrial port.

In addition to its aesthetic value, this living shoreline creates an inherent resiliency to water inundation with a bio-engineered soft edge and planting that thrives in the tidal fluctuations, making legible the natural ebbs and flows of the sea and generating a habitat for diverse flora and fauna as well as people. As the landscape gradually slopes toward the building, it transitions to outdoor rooms that spill out from the museum, activating the site and creating a seamless integration of building and landscape. These outdoor spaces will host day to day use as well as gatherings and events to create a destination that will be welcoming to all, alone or in groups, and delightful in all seasons.

Bird’s Eye View of Site Looking Southwest

View of Landscape and Waterfront from Salter St. Plaza

The experience of moving from city to water will be amplified by the landscape design -- from locally sourced stone paving and boulders along Lower Water Street, to trees and scrub as one progresses eastward, to grasses and maritime ecologies at the water’s edge. This dry to wet progression mimics what would have existed on the site in its pre-contact state. The experience of moving along the boardwalk will immerse the visitor in different landscapes -- from trees and scrub, to tall coastal grasses, to rocks and beach, to open water -- as a living landscape exhibition, punctuated by art installations that will bring the museum to the water and vice versa.

The new grade mitigation from land to sea will stabilize the site, which is currently unconsolidated fill, allowing a relationship with the water that both protects from and receives inundation in a more natural and resilient relationship. The new living shoreline will be bioengineered with an embedded structure and soil, plants and rocks that create an ecosystem supporting a diversity of flora and fauna as well as human access in select areas. It will also allow for the future addition of a sea wall for ship docking at the boardwalk edge if deemed necessary.

This slope orientation also maximizes solar exposure for the public realm, leveraging the warmth of the sun to extend its seasonal use and creating fertile conditions for the landscape to thrive and a biodiverse mix of fauna to be attracted to the site. The planting on the site will create year-round interest and habitat and speak to the cultural history and traditions of the Mi’kmaq that will continue to be honoured on site.

Boardwalk

TREE SPECIES

COASTAL OUTCROP

Nova Scotia Ecosystem: Heathlands / Rock Barrens

WHITE SPRUCE / Kawatkw (Picea glauca)

Mi’kmaq Uses: beverage, medicine, fuel, boughs used to make beds

RED SPRUCE / Kawatkw (Picea rubens) – Nova Scotia’s provincial tree

Mi’kmaq Uses: poles, twine

BALSAM FIR / Stoqn (Abies balsamea)

Mi’kmaq Uses: medicine, fuel, boughs used to make beds

WHITE PINE / Guow (Pinus strobus)

Mi’kmaq Uses: beverage, food, tea, medicine, fuel

WHITE BIRCH / Maskwi (Betula papyrifera)

Mi’kmaq Uses: basket weaving, boxes, canoes, dishes, house coverings

BAYBERRY / Kljimanaqsi (Myrica pennsylvanica)

Mi’kmaq Uses: tea, medicine

SALTER STREET GROVE

Nova Scotia Ecosystem: Mixed Maritime / Acadian Forest

SUGAR MAPLE / Snawey (Acer saccharum)

Mi’kmaq Uses: syrup, tea, broth, basket weaving, bows and arrows

YELLOW BIRCH / Nimnoqn (Betula alleghaniensis)

Mi’kmaq Uses: syrup, medicine, tea, basket weaving, straps, thongs

GREY BIRCH (Betula populafolia)

Mi’kmaq Uses: medicine, torches for night fishing, trumpets for game calling, boxes, wigwam poles

NORTHERN RED OAK / Mimkwonmooseel (Quercus rubra)

Mi’kmaq Uses: medicine, flour,

BLACK ASH / Wiskoq (Fraxinus nigra)

Mi’kmaq Uses: basket weaving, canoes, axe handles

BUTTERFLY MEADOW

Nova Scotia Ecosystem: Coastal Meadow

TREMBLING ASPEN / Miti (Populus tremuloides)

Mi’kmaq Uses: medicine, stimulate appetite, vitamin C

SALTER STREET GROVE

CINNAMON FERN (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum)

HAY-SCENTED FERN (Dennstaedtia punctilioba)

CHRISTMAS FERN (Polystichum acrostichoides)

LOWBUSH BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium angustifolium)

COASTAL OUTCROP

CREEPING JUNIPER (Juniperus horizontalis)

WINTERGREEN (Gaultheria procumbens)

BROOM-CROWBERRY (Corema conradii)

LOWBUSH BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium angustifolium)

BUTTERFLY MEADOW

SWEET GALE (Myrica gale) SWITCHGRASS (Panicum virgatum)

BLACK-EYED SUSAN (Rudbeckia hirta)

CANADA GOLDENROD (Solidago canadensis)

YARROW (Achillea millefolium)

SWAMP MILKWEED (Asclepias incarnata)

QUEEN ANNE’S LACE (Daucus carota)

MOUNTAIN MINT (Pycnanthemum muticum)

INDIGENOUS GARDEN

WHITE SAGE Mi’kmaq spirituality medecine (Salvia apiana)

SWEETGRASS Mi’kmaq spirituality medecine (Hierochloe odorata)

INDIAN TOBACCO Mi’kmaq spirituality medecine (Lobelia inflata)

LITTLE BLUESTEM (Schizachyrium scoparium)

NEW ENGLAND ASTER (Aster novae-angliae)

PURPLE CONEFLOWER (Echinacea purpurea)

JOE-PYE WEED (Eupatorium maculatum)

SLOPED TIDAL MARSH TERRACED SALT MARSH

SALTMEADOW CORDGRASS (Spartina alternifolia)

EEL GRASS (Zostera marina)

BLADDERWRACK SEAWEED (Fucus vesiculosus)

SALTMARSH BULRUSH (Bolboschoenus maritimus)

SALT GRASS (Distichlis spicata)

SALTMARSH SPIKERUSH (Eleocharis halophila)

SALTMEADOW CORDGRASS (Spartina alternifolia)