Heneghan Peng Wins Canadian Canoe Museum Competition

The Irish-Canadian team beat KPF, Bing Thom, Provencher_Roy, and 5468796 with a serpentine glass pavilion capped by a two-acre rooftop garden. The museum's move to a site at the Peterborough Lift Lock National Historic Site on on the Trent-Severn Waterway is envisioned as a way to boost tourism for both the museum and the historic site. The Canadian Canoe Museum boasts the world’s largest collection of canoes and kayaks, and the site would enable water-related programming to take place.

According to a statement from the museum, the winning design "stood apart from the other submissions as the design works organically with the land rather than overwhelming it." Further, "The organically-shaped volume banded on its top edge with local hardwood is embedded within the site’s drumlins, allowing the museum’s light-sensitive collections of historic birch bark canoes that date back to the 1780s and aboriginal artefacts to enjoy energy-passive, naturally dark spaces."

The winning team will move ahead to prepare a planning submission to the City of Peterborough and Parks Canada as the first step towards the construction of the new Canadian Canoe Museum. And like other cultural institutions, "the Canadian Canoe Museum will continue to ramp up the capital investment campaign that will be necessary to fund construction of the new museum building," per the statement.