25th Feb 2021: shortlist revealed for LGBTQ2+ monument in Ottawa

The shortlist has been announced in the design contest for the LGBTQ2+ National Monument in Ottawa, which will memorialize the historic discrimination against LGBTQ2+ Canadians, including the LGBT Purge. The purge was a prolonged and widespread campaign led by the Government of Canada from the 1950s to the 1990s that identied and expelled thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the federal public service. 

The teams through to the next stage of the competition are as follows:

• Team Durling: Fathom Studio, visual arts and landscape architecture (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia), MVRDV, architecture and landscape architecture (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Two Row Architect (Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario)

• Team MASS: MASS Design Group, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design (Boston, Massachusetts), Stephen Andrews, artist (Toronto, Ontario)

• Team OnCommon Ground: bbb architects (Ottawa, Ontario); PWP Landscape Architects (Berkeley, California), WSP, engineering (Ottawa, Ontario); Nadia Myre, Algonquin visual artist (Montréal, Quebec)

• Team SOM: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), architecture (New York, New York); Noam Gonick, artist (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Rebecca Belmore, artist (Lac Seul First Nation, Ontario), HTFC Planning and Design, landscape architecture (Winnipeg, Manitoba)

• Team Wreford: Public City, architecture and landscape architecture (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, visual artists (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Albert McLeod, Indigenous & Two-Spirited People subject-matter expert and advisor (Winnipeg, Manitoba)

Canada was the first country in the world to provide substantial compensation for the harm inflicted on its own people through decades of state-sponsored discrimination. The project proponent, LGBT Purge Fund, is a not-for-profit corporation established in 2018 to manage memorialisation and reconciliation projects mandated by this settlement, and is working with Canadian Heritage and the National Capital Commission to ensure the monument reflects the objectives of the compensation agreement.

The teams have until August 2021 to submit their proposals. Survivors of the purge, members of the LGBTQ2+ community, other stakeholders, and the public will be invited to provide feedback on the finalists’ proposals before a design is chosen by the jury. The announcement of the winning design is planned for late 2021.

This competition was first published by TenderStream on 19.11.2020 and can be viewed in our archive here