2000 Presenter Full Presenter List

Douglas Cardinal

Architect

Douglas Cardinal believes buildings should be designed from the inside out and that influences of the environment will shape the building, organically, from the outside in. The success of this philosophy is obvious from the architect’s stellar career, capped in 1999 by the receipt of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Gold Medal.

Mr. Cardinal’s trademark soaring, curved facades grace monuments such as the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has also been internationally praised for his design of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which the Globe and Mail called “a domed maelstrom of a structure fluid enough to look like crystallized movement.”

Passionate, mercurial, and always original, Mr. Cardinal has received many awards over the last two decades, including the National Aboriginal Achievement Award of Canada in 1995. He is also an officer of the Order of Canada. Educated at the University of British Columbia and the University of Texas, he has received honorary doctorates from a handful of Canadian universities.

An early adherent of computer-aided design, Mr. Cardinal’s firm, Douglas J. Cardinal Architect Limited, was one of the first fully electronic architectural firms in North America.