Architect was a key contributor to our skyline

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This article was published 04/03/2024 (576 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Antoine Predock, the design architect of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and a major contributor to the modern Winnipeg skyline, has died. He was 87.

The American architect’s winning design for the CMHR — which he described as “carved into the earth and dissolving into the sky” — was selected in a juried architectural competition, one of Canada’s largest, launched by Friends of the CMHR in 2003. The museum opened to the public in 2014.

“My life in architecture has been an extraordinary adventure, culminating in the privilege of being selected to design the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. I’m often asked what my favourite, my most important building is. I’m going on the record right now. This is it,” Predock said in a 2014 CMHR media release. That year, he received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Born in Missouri in 1936 and based in Albuquerque, N.M., Predock was the principal of Antoine Predock Architect PC, which he founded in 1967.

He was known for his bold, geometric, minimalist designs that took cues from geology and nature.

Predock first rose to prominence for designing the planned community of La Luz del Oeste, N.M., built between 1967 and 1974. Other notable projects include the Turtle Creek House in Texas, the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, as well as many buildings in his adopted home state, including the University of New Mexico School of Architecture, the Albuquerque Museum and the Spencer Theater in Alto, N.M.

Among Predock’s honours were the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal, the Smithsonian Cooper‐Hewitt Lifetime Achievement Award and the prestigious Rome Prize.

Predock was an avid motorcyclist. He told Architect Magazine in 2015 that the CMHR’s now-iconic white alabaster ramps linking the museum’s galleries echo the switchbacks on canyon roads he liked to ride on. He described the ascending path through the CMHR as a “back and forth duality of light and of dark. It’s a big-picture duality, dark where you begin, light where you ascend.”

He last visited the museum in 2018 for the unveiling of the new $10 bill bearing his design.

“We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Antoine Predock, and so grateful for his remarkable vision in designing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” Isha Khan, CEO of the CMHR, said in a statement.

“His concept of a building that speaks to the ongoing story of human rights and a journey from darkness to light inspires our work every day, and we know it will continue to inspire those who come into the museum for generations to come.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com