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AS THE WORLD CURVES (p. 2)

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG 03

The National Museum of the American Indian fills the last available spot on Washington's National Mall, standing opposite to I.M. Pei's National Gallery east wing. This past spring, as the first rows of limestone were being set down along the NMAI's sweeping facade, Cardinal's trademark curves and cantilevers were already apparent. Anyone who views the NMAI architectural drawings or the building as it nears completion will come to the same conclusion.

When the New York architect who replaced Cardinal as architect of record was asked about the authorship of the final design, James Stewart Polshek's firm provided this written statement: "In the American Indian way, the consultations and design workshops conducted by the client were extraordinary collaborations that enhanced and brought closure to the design process. There is no single firm or individual solely responsible for the completion of this unique building." (Polshek declined to be interviewed for this article.)

It is one thing to fire a maverick or disruptive architect, but quite another matter to deny his authorship of a building. How could the Canadian architect turn so many against him? He was difficult, and not for the first time. In the mid-1990s, Cardinal challenged a proposed addition by another architect to his first masterwork, the 1968 St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Red Deer, Alta., in an intellectual property injunction heard in Federal Court. (Cardinal eventually dropped the suit because he could not afford the estimated $1-million in legal fees, and the addition now obscures the original front door of the church.) The stories of Cardinal's two other most prominent buildings – the Grande Prairie Regional College of 1976 and Gatineau's Canadian Museum of Civilization of 1989 – are strangely similar to the NMAI scandal. Cardinal nearly lost both commissions when his original political patrons were replaced with officials who would not grant him the near-absolute creative control he desires.

When this pattern is pointed out, Cardinal wearily acknowledges, "Yes, I have been through this before. You have to be true to your vision because that is ultimately the reason a real architect is hired." Others might say that a "real architect" is hired to complete ambitious projects to spec, on time and on budget – admittedly a rarity among many world-class talents.

Will the opening next year of the NMAI be seen as Cardinal's final vindication, or a celebration of his failure? His fans would argue that Cardinal's work has always been literally ahead of the curve. Thanks to Frank Gehry and the so-called Blobsters, recent architecture has celebrated curving forms like Cardinal's. Largely designed in 1964, St. Mary's incorporated an open plan and deformalization of Roman Catholic ritual that anticipated Vatican II's liturgical reforms by several years. Many subsequent community centres have imitated Cardinal's pioneering integration of cultural, educational and library facilities in Grande Prairie. He has predicted and practised the use of computer-aided design for 40 years, and his firm was Western Canada's first to produce entirely electronic design drawings. Cardinal followed solar, organic and green design principles long before stylists deemed them trendy. Philip Johnson, the dean of American architects, once called Cardinal "Canada's most interesting architect."

Yet his work has never found much favour in academia because it lacks the historical credentials and obscure theoretical justifications that ensconce designers in ivory towers. When I taught architecture at Carleton University in the 1980s, faculty and students alike used to refer to the Canadian Museum of Civilization as "that giant hot dog." Cardinal has limited commercial commission prospects, as he has never designed a building for the private sector.

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG 03