A life under construction
Architect has new priorities after long career
In December 2009, at a news conference announcing the expansion of the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, Douglas Cardinal, one of Canada’s bestknown architects, and his son, Bret, stood beside a model of the building, sharing credit for the design.
The mood in the room was jubilant as politicians promised funds for the $14.2-million structure Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood. At Cardinal’s office, however, there was growing tension between father and son. Seven months later, in July 2010, Bret, 46, left to start his own firm, Cardinal Conley & Associates, taking three senior staff with him. A working relationship of 25 years was over.
Cardinal, 79, was also in transition. He had begun to assess his life and career, realizing his drive to succeed and to create exceptional buildings had cost him dearly. The rift with his son was a turning point.
“I wanted to be the best architect in Canada and the best architect internationally,” he says. “I set my goals awfully high, and so I had all this ambition, and it got me a long way but I know it’s not a very satisfactory life.
“There’s a high price and it’s a lot of stress and a lot of stress on the people around me. That’s why I’ve been married four times. I’ve always had this problem in the past, of always putting my architecture first, my clients first, and in a sense everybody first before myself and my family.”
Cardinal, who is of Blackfoot and Metis heritage, is most famously the architect of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., near Ottawa, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. He has more than 100 built projects across Canada and in the United States, including the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, the Telus World of Science in Edmonton and the Cree Village of Ouje-Bougoumou in northern Quebec, which won a United Nations award in 1998 for “best sustainable community.”
In 2011, Cardinal made a life-changing decision. He moved his Ottawa office to his home south of the city in the neighbourhood of Heart’s Desire. He now works out of a 1950s split-level house with a young staff and his wife, Idoia Arana-Beobide, 48, as managing director.
In the boardroom, he stands and warms his back against a gas fireplace and looks out on the ice-covered Rideau River beyond a glass wall.
“There’s a point at which you look at your life and say, ‘OK, you’ve got the Order of Canada, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada gold medal, 14 doctorates,’” he says. “‘You don’t have to prove anything to yourself or anybody else.’
“You climb to the top of your profession, sacrifice to get there, and there’s nothing at the top, just these awful dinners and boring speeches. You climb the mountain and sit there eating rubber chicken.”
Though it’s not where he imagined he’d be at this age — he thought he’d be doing more international work — Cardinal says the past two years have been the happiest in his life.
“I don’t want to fight with anybody anymore,” he says. “I decided to reinvent myself and do exactly what I want and what I love doing. It is for me the most productive stage of my life. It is quite amazing.”
Out of 8,000 architects in Canada, Cardinal is one of the few who has achieved fame. His buildings are distinguished by curves and exuberant sculptural forms, finding inspiration in nature. The design process starts with a “vision session” with owners and users.
During the past 50 years, he has designed schools, health centres, museums, theatres, administrative offices, churches, hotels, housing, industrial buildings and community master plans across Canada and the U.S. Much of his work has been for aboriginal communities.
Cardinal started his career in his native Alberta designing basement rumpus rooms. He received national attention with first major commission, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Red Deer, a graceful building with curved brick walls that opened in 1968.
“My client not only wanted a space that served the function of the church, but also a spiritual space that elevated the human spirit,” he recalls. “My thinking has always been, ‘Why is that just for Sunday?’”
That philosophy — that buildings should be uplifting — attracted business. Cardinal continued to build a reputation for high-quality design with projects such as Grande Prairie Regional College, completed in 1976. At the same time, his office was on the cutting edge of technology. It became one of the first in the world to adopt computers for design. Cardinal prospered. “I even had a limo in Alberta,” he laughs.
In 1984, he moved to Ottawa after being selected architect for the Museum of Civilization. There were challenges: Budget, politics and bureaucracy. Estimated at $80 million, the complex building actually cost $340 million. Cardinal toiled first for the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and then the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.
At one point, he fended off cost-cutting suggestions from bureaucrats to straighten the lines of the museum’s two curvilinear buildings.
When the museum opened in 1989, Cardinal was $900,000 in debt. The fees did not cover the time and effort expended for what became an internationally recognized building and Canada’s most-visited museum. “He felt very much betrayed,” says his wife, AranaBeobide.
She met Cardinal in 1988 when the museum was under construction. She was a young tour guide, dressed in hard-hat and miniskirt, enrolled in museum studies at a city college. Warned that Cardinal was “very arrogant,” she sought him out anyway to gain information for visitors who were curious about the architect.
“What I saw was not only a fascinating man, but how alone he was,” she says. “Whenever he had this vision, he would just assume everyone saw it and had the energy and ability to get there. I can see that he created a lot of not just enemies but this tension.”
Looking back, Cardinal says:
I don’t want to fight with anybody anymore. DOUGLAS CARDINAL
“I think I made it very difficult for everybody around me. I was so righteous, ambitious, confrontational, I’d take on the whole world.”
Arana-Beobide became the contact person between the museum and Cardinal’s office. In 1990, when she returned to her native Basque Country in Spain, he pursued her. “I can’t live without you,” he said.
They have been married 17 years and have a son, 15, and a daughter, 10.
In 1993, Cardinal won the architectural commission of the decade: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington.
Set against the dramatic backdrop of the U.S. Capitol building on the National Mall, the $219-million US museum was supposed to be the highlight of his career.
He thought his experience in Ottawa had prepared him for the American capital. He was wrong. “What I really had to to learn more about was how to deal with the politics,” he says.
A mid controversy ,the Smithsonian Institution fired Cardinal in 1998, seized his drawings and gave the project to others to complete. Cardinal returned to Ottawa saying his design was stolen, and he was owed $1 million in unpaid fees.
“I got blindsided,” he says. “I trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted. I have to listen to Idoia more often. She’s brought up in a ruthless dictatorship under Franco so she can see through people, which I can’t. I believe in the goodness of people. Because you love your work you’re open to being exploited.”
When the building opened in 2004, he refused to attend and called it a forgery.
“It broke his spirit,” says Arana-Beobide. “It took him a long time to recover from that.”
Again having lost money on a big project, Cardinal lived with Bret and his family for a while. “He was so supportive of me during me all my rough years,” Cardinal says.
Cardinal’s relationship with his son remains strained. They haven’t spoken since Bret left the office in 2010.
“It was really unfair to him,” says Cardinal. “He was always referred to as ‘son of.’ He’s his own person and a good architect.”
Of Cardinal’s eight children, Bret is the only one to follow him into architecture. Cardinal also has 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Bret agrees it was time to move on. “I felt I wasn’t given credit for a lot of the work I was doing. Obviously I learned a lot and I appreciate everything he’s done for my career. We had a great relationship for 25 years.”
But Bret and other architects in the firm wanted to make their mark, which Cardinal’s fame and highly personal style made difficult. “I was caught in a situation with him and his colleagues,” says the elder Cardinal. “Some had spent over 10 years working with me. They’re architects. They want to express themselves.
“It was frustrating for both of us,” he says. “I’m not a firm, which I would say delegates design to other architects. I have a signature style and a way of thinking and designing organically that’s unique to me. My clients always said, ‘We came to you for your design. We want you personally involved.’
“I thought I could mentor a school of architects that would follow my approach to architecture, but I’m too individualistic.”
Cardinal is currently designing a glassy addition based on octagons for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia on Ottawa’s Sussex Drive. Cardinal has also been chosen as lead architect for renovations to the Museum of Civilization, which is being rebranded the Canadian Museum of History.
Upon reflection, Cardinal says: “I don’t regret anything in the past. Those were all great learning experiences, including Washington.
“I’ve gone through really challenging times in my life and then I figured a way to always ride through and pick up the pieces.”