Glenbow is more than a museum; it is a place of confluence where stories, objects, and people meet. Once an inward-looking concrete vault, it is now transformed into a permeable, luminous space that connects art with community and the city beyond.
The new architecture blurs boundaries – between inside and out, institution and city, what a museum has been and what it might become. For the first time, Glenbow features front doors carved directly into its façades along Stephen Avenue and 9th Avenue. Inside the museum, the Vertical Gallery, a soaring five-storey atrium, draws daylight deep into the building, creating a space for orientation and contemplation. Conservation labs, art storage, and workshops are revealed, displaying the care and craft behind the collections. Galleries are designed to flex and adapt, allowing quiet moments to coexist with expansive public spaces. The Salon gallery introduces the “pillow window,” framing city views in a way that reinforces a porous, transparent experience that acts both as mirror and window – inviting reflection while opening outward.
Glenbow’s design embraces a deliberate “fuzziness,” creating a building that is open to interpretation and change. Its diaphanous skin – made of glass-fibre-reinforced concrete – shifts with the light, dissolving at its edges. The façade is never singular; it transforms with time, season, and perception.
This act of reimagining is also one of stewardship. Through adaptive reuse, the project preserves 38,000 tons of concrete from ending up in landfill and avoids generating 56,000 tons of new carbon emissions. The transformation of 354,000 square feet in the heart of Calgary’s cultural district is not only architectural – it’s a civic gesture. Glenbow becomes a museum for everyone – a vessel not only for art, but for belonging.
- Location
- Calgary, AB
- Size
- 354,000 sq ft
- Client
- Glenbow Museum of Art
- Completion
- 2026
- DIALOG Services
- Collaborators
RJC Engineers
Smith + Andersen
Scatliff + Miller + Murray
McElhanney
YEO Code Consulting
Universal Access Inc.
EllisDon
Architecture
Interior Design
The original museum stood as a heavy concrete fortress, its blank walls and hidden entry turned away from the life of the street.
Cracking open the vault: the concrete frame is cut and reshaped to create new entrances and volumes, transforming Glenbow’s sealed skin into a porous, civic invitation.
The new entrance opens as a transparent beacon on the street, drawing light, movement, and community directly into the heart of the museum.
A diaphanous skin that ripples with shifting light, the façade becomes a living canvas where shadow and glow compose ever-changing patterns of motion and depth.
A carved opening in the façade channels northern light into the double-height Salon Gallery.
Surgical cuts through the waffle concrete frame form the soaring vertical gallery, the two-storey cube gallery, and the multi-purpose cascade gallery.
Design Team
Robert Claiborne, Creative Director, Partner in Charge
Kyle Auch, Project Manager
Jodi James, Design Lead
Addie Suchorab, Project Architect
Tracy Liu, Project Architect
Matt Stewart, Computational Design, Envelope Design
Cohen, Interior Design
Project Team
Steve Veres
Alyssa Moyer
Caleb Hildenbrandt
Edward Park
Ryan Van Marle
Joel Penner
Camille Ganuelas
Rick Baniqued
The Team
- Nicholas R. Bell, President and CEO, Glenbow“Our focus will be to share stories and collections in ways that provide inspiration to Calgarians and visitors from around the world. We are also committed to reintroducing Glenbow to Canada, with the caliber of building worthy of this city’s potential on the national arts and culture scene.”
