A WORK IN PROGRESS
After a rift with his son, architect Douglas Cardinal is reinventing himself with a young new team.
IN December 2009, at a press conference announcing the expansion of the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, Douglas Cardinal, one of Canada’s best-known 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 on Montreal Road in Vanier. 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, of Blackfoot and Métis heritage, is most famously the architect of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He has more than 100 built projects across Canada and in the U.S., including the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, the Telus World of Science in Edmonton and the Cree Village of Oujé-Bougoumou in northern Quebec, which won a United Nations award in 1998 for “best sustainable community.”
In 2011, Cardinal made a lifechanging decision. He moved his Somerset Street West office to his home in Heart’s Desire, a neighbourhood in south Ottawa. 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 snowcovered 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 which 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 Arana-Beobide.
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 Algonquin 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 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 (U.S) 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.
Amid 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 that 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, so far, to follow him into architecture. Cardinal also has 12 grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren.
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.”
In recent years, Cardinal supported Bret and others in their desire to take a more prominent role in the design, production of drawings, and management of projects. Among these were Wabano Centre, set to open in May, and the Cree Cultural Institute at Oujé-Bougoumou, which opened last year. The Dawson Creek native housing project at Dawson Creek, B.C., completed in 2011, was designed by Bret.
“I was not happy because I felt I had to compromise my way of doing things,” says Cardinal. “I felt that I was getting away from being intimately involved in every detail. Ultimately, it’s my name on the door.”
He says he and Bret realized they’d both be happier doing their own designs. “We don’t have a specific style as of yet and are still developing our own signature,” Bret says of his firm. “Naturally it would be a combination of Doug’s curvilinear architecture which I trained under ... and my own esthetic which is exposing more structure and functionality. Industrial organic is a good description.”
Cardinal admires his son’s approach. “I really like it. My influence is more related to organic forms inspired by nature and I think his forms are more inspired by technology.”
Cardinal thought he would one day retire and give the firm to Bret. Arana-Beobide reminded him he
‘You climb to the top of your profession, sacrifice to get there,’ Cardinal says, ‘and there’s nothing at the top, just these awful dinners and boring speeches. You climb to the top of the mountain and sit there eating rubber chicken.’
couldn’t afford to retire.
“I have children younger than Bret’s,” he says. “I don’t get to retire. Besides, what would I do?”
There are five employees at Douglas Cardinal Architect Inc. compared to 12 staff at his previous office. The house on Lodge Road near Manotick is rented, while Cardinal designs a house and office to be built eventually on land he owns in Dunrobin.
“Architecture is my whole life,” he says sipping apple juice in the sunfilled boardroom where the walls are covered with awards. “I live and breathe it. I didn’t sleep last night. I was designing something in my head.”
Tall and slender, he wears a white shirt with pale stripes and grey trousers. His hair is white, his posture impeccable. He speaks slowly and quietly. By working at home, he saves commuting time and sees more of his wife and children.
Two intern architects and a building information modelling manager, Carleton University graduates in their 20s, sit at computers in a walkout basement, working on threedimensional models.
“It’s fun to work with these guys,” says Cardinal. “Their generation have been on computers since they were two or three years old. They’re very creative in finding all the different programs and apps in order to be able to do some very advanced ways of putting buildings together.”
Cardinal is currently designing a glassy addition based on octagons for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia on Sussex Drive. There have been some 100 modifications of the floor plan “to get it to sing, the way it’s supposed to,” says intern architect Ashley Marcynuk.
Cardinal has been also chosen as lead architect for renovations to the Museum of Civilization, which is being rebranded the Canadian Museum of History. He will be part of the museum’s consultation process to gather information on themes for use by exhibit designers, engineers, and architects. The project involves remodelling the history hall. In addition, the firm is overseeing an exterior-stair retrofit and preparing designs for an outdoor stage and wedding gazebo.
“He doesn’t breathe down our necks,” says intern architect Marco Ianni, 27. “He’s encouraging and supportive.”
Because it’s a small office, the staff, though junior, are given the chance to explore all aspects of a project, including construction supervision and dealing with clients.
“I will in a sense be like the coach and they’re the team,” says Cardinal.“It’s not a hierarchical system. It’s more like a circle and I can be in the centre and talk to everybody equally.”
Cardinal makes the rounds with each person, reviews the work and discusses the next step. “I get to be a human library,” he says. “I’ll say, ‘Try this window, try that detail, this is how the vapour barrier should work, this is how the stone should be.’ Then they put it together in 3-D.
“I get just as much from it as they do,” he says. “I have to be responsive to their generation.”
The team ends each week with a sweat lodge in Dunrobin. They cut wood, make a fire, heat the stones red-hot. Inside the dome-shaped lodge made of willow saplings, Cardinal sings and drums. The two-hour sweat reduces stress and brings clarity of mind, he says.
The firm’s projects are at various stages: Construction starts this spring on the $15-million Gordon Oakes-Red Bear Centre, a students’ centre at University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. A couple of private houses in Wakefield and Dunrobin are in design. Construction drawings are underway for an aboriginal students’ centre at Carleton University and a school in Winneway, Que.
“We’re looking for like-minded clients, people who want to do something sculptural and beautiful and sustainable,” says Cardinal.
One client is entrepreneur Rod Bryden, president of the Plasco Energy Group, who has hired Cardinal to design a garbage-to-energy treatment plant. “The building should express the technology of the future,” says Cardinal. “We’re exploring forms and shapes.”
Part of the building’s message is that the $20-million plant is not an old-school incinerator, says Bryden. “We want this waste plant to be recognized as something you would find acceptable in any light industrial area.” Construction is expected to start next spring on Trail Road.
“He’s a treat to work with, a very courteous and pleasant man as well as broadly intelligent,” says Bryden. “He’s a very high-quality combination of creativity, knowledge and experience. Douglas as our designer said something to our potential international customer base.”
Cardinal is more relaxed, in part because some old wounds have started to heal.
In 2008, 10 years after his dismissal, he attended a dinner at the National Museum of the American Indian, where he was publicly thanked for his contribution. About 100 guests sat at round tables in the Potomac, a vast domed space, 40 metres high from the circular hardwood floor to the skylight at the top of the dome. The occasion highlighted national apologies made to native peoples, including the apology by the Canadian government.
For Cardinal it was a personal reconciliation with the Smithsonian. Earlier that year, Tim Johnson, the museum’s associate director for programs, reached out, both to mend the relationship and to seek his advice on how to improve the visitor experience in the entry.
“I felt it wasn’t good to have that hanging over the heads of Indian peoples,” says Johnson. “The pain associated with it, it just wasn’t good, it wasn’t healthy.
“He came and he offered a lot of really good advice. One of the favourite things about our museum is the building itself. Douglas really has created a masterpiece.”
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.”