Internationally recognized artist Maya Lin as been chosen to design the rooftop terrace at Glenbow Museum. This will be her first project in Canada.
She will design the 13,000-square-foot terrace on the fifth-floor rooftop of the building, which has been renamed the JR Shaw Centre for Arts & Culture. The space overlooks downtown Calgary, with western views of Stephen Avenue and iconic surrounding buildings like the Calgary Tower, TELUS Sky and The Bow.
The terrace will include an all-season pavilion, event spaces, sculpture and gardens, along with a skylight and oculus to filter natural light into the museum. As a leader across these fields, Lin is uniquely qualified to plan this space.
“We are transforming a 50-year-old roof at the museum into a community-oriented place where you can come up out of downtown and find refuge and respite to celebrate the arts surrounded by Glenbow’s program and collections,” said Nicholas R. Bell, president and CEO of Glenbow. “We are so excited that Maya Lin is the visionary who will shape this experience for our visitors.”
Lin’s design emphasizes natural elements drawn from the prairie landscape as a way to soften the space and invite community. Of the design, Lin says, “The space will afford a welcoming place that will invite visitors to connect to art, landscape and the city of Calgary.”
Lin cites adaptive reuse as a key reason she was attracted to the project. “This idea that we are recycling a building in the centre of downtown Calgary and making something new out of it while utilizing as much of the old building was a huge draw for me,” she says. “If we can use an existing building in a better way, it is a lot more energy efficient, it is a lot more material efficient, and it sends a very different message about resource consumption and directly counters attitudes about a throwaway culture.”
The overall design of the reimagined Glenbow is led by Calgary’s Dialog. The downtown museum closed in 2021 to accommodate major renovations and is scheduled to open in early 2026.
