CMHR | Winnipeg

[Kris22]

That model is fantastic. It gives a great sense of the scale and presence the building will have. I can practically feel myself walking through the grounds around it. 2012 seems so far way...

[Brokenhead]

I gotta go and take some more photos one day. Last time I was here was almost two months ago and so much progress seemed to happen during this period. Starting to get some height to it.

[Brokenhead]

I guess to get the general idea the size of this building, its projected to be 260,000 sq. feet. The Guggenheim Bilbao is 265,000 sq. feet.

[trueviking]

that last pic is interesting...i always pictured that the sweeping glass was parallel to the road and the entrance to the forks, but it really isnt....the glass faces much more south towards the forks...the back side isnt towards the bridge as much as it is to water avenue.....its almost 90 degrees from what i had pictured.


so...i guess this is the part that is taking shape right now, so when that block is topped off, we will have a sense of how big it will be in relation....

[DowntownWpg]

Originally Posted by beatlesque

i checked out the model here in vancouver and spoke to one of the museum execs - as suspected before (and can be seen in the model) the plan now calls for no glass roof because of the risk from leaks, etc.

If the CMHR had a glass ceiling, the symbolic irony would have been quite funny.

[viperred88]

Iceland airline bullish about Winnipeg
Intrigued by rights museum's tourism potential
By: Geoff Kirbyson

If Winnipeg is going to be the next Bilbao, the CEO of Iceland Express wants in on the ground floor.Matthias Imsland, head of the Reykjavik-based carrier, said he's looking to expand the airline's transatlantic service to Winnipeg even before it has begun. The first of Iceland Express's twice-weekly flights from Winnipeg to London, which include a fuel stop in Iceland, will depart on June 5.

He said while the airline has a built-in market in Manitoba because of the large Icelandic population, that alone isn't enough to sustain daily flights between Winnipeg and Iceland during the busy June to September tourist season, a scenario he envisions in the next three to four years.

Imsland said he is intrigued by the tourism potential presented by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is under construction at The Forks and scheduled to open in 2012.

"We saw what happened in BiIbao, Spain (after the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997). There could be a fast-growing tourism industry in Winnipeg. We definitely feel we could sell a lot of tickets from Europe to Winnipeg. This is a long-term investment for us. We want to be in the pole position," he said.

Even during the off-season, Imsland said Iceland Express could maintain one or two flights per week out of Winnipeg in a few years.

Imsland was in town Thursday to meet with officials at the Winnipeg Airports Authority, travel agencies and Premier Greg Selinger. His visit comes weeks after Go Travel Flights, an Ottawa-based tour operator, went out of business. Go Travel had been advertising seats on Iceland Express flights out of Winnipeg.

Imsland said the airline is doing everything it can to accommodate Winnipeggers who booked through Go Travel so they aren't left high and dry this summer.

"A lot of people thought because the tour operator shut down that (Iceland Express's) flights would not go. That's strange," he said.

Barry Rempel, president and CEO of the WAA, said Imsland's confidence in the Winnipeg market could have far-reaching potential and help the city become a "centre of transportation excellence."

"Winnipeg used to have very regular non-stop, wide-body service between Winnipeg and the U.K. This is an affirmation that others also believe the market is there and this community is capable of sustaining that kind of growth," he said.

Rempel said he and Imsland also discussed the possibility of shipping cargo back and forth between Manitoba and Iceland and exchanging ideas and technologies around sustainable development, an area where both jurisdictions are strong.

As a potential trailblazer, Imsland said he anticipates larger carriers will follow his lead if Winnipeg's tourism potential is realized.

Iceland Express has a fleet of five 757s, which carry 200 passengers each. Using Iceland as a hub, it offers 23 weekly flights to Europe plus four to New York.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 12, 2010 A11

[Donovanf]

Well lets hope the Icelanders are better at running airlines than banks

[DowntownWpg]

Nothing more than a clever, well-placed musing by Iceland Express to garner some free media. Public Communications 101. Gets them additional name recognition shortly before they begin flying out of YWG, and you want some name recognition to come not just by paid ads, but a variety of sources to have more of an overall impact on the public and to solidify brand awareness. A very common PR tactic to ensure free (and positive) press in a local market is to hype-up some local event or project, link your cause/company/org to it somehow, and the local reporters will give you some ink.

You'll note his wording on upping the flights due to the CMHR is totally noncommittal anyway, and Iceland Express would no doubt conduct an internal study on the feasibility of adding more flights after the CMHR opens to assess at what, if any, increased tourism there is from Europe to Winnipeg. Also, throwing in a mention about the Guggenheim would certainly ensure some lowly local scribe would bite.

Hey, I always hope we get more international fights to and from Winnipeg. Just wanted to mention the PR tactic of Iceland Express, 'cause I could envision some people taking this story as 'proof' that the CMHR will be a substantial tourist destination. We'll have to wait and see (and, of course, 'virtual visits' to the CMHR don't count as increased tourism).

[rrskylar]

^ Don't be so negative, I'm quite sure at least 100 people a year will venture from Iceland to see the great spectacle called the CMHR.

[Jets4Life]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

^ Don't be so negative, I'm quite sure at least 100 people a year will venture from Iceland to see the great spectacle called the CMHR.

I heard a rumor that the CMHR was being built on sacred Indian burial grounds.

[hexrae]

Originally Posted by Jets4Life

I heard a rumor that the CMHR was being built on sacred Indian burial grounds.

Is this a tongue-in-cheek comment or are you going somewhere with this?

IIRC, there has been a number of archeological digs over the years, but no indisputable evidence of burial grounds.

[1ajs]

the rummor claims most of downtown is onto of burial grounds

[hexrae]

Ok, so is this a recent rumour a la 'NHL to Winnipeg'?

[Jets4Life]

Originally Posted by hexrae

Ok, so is this a recent rumour a la 'NHL to Winnipeg'?

Perhaps the rumor was false. GrumpyOldMan, who I was debating with had mentioned it in passing. . Since he is very pro-Museum, I took his word as gospel.

[1ajs]

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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
WELCOME BACK: Manitobans' roles at human rights museum Happy homecoming

Former Winnipeggers glad to be back in the city

By: Adam Wazny
18/03/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

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[IMG]http://media.winnipegfreepress.com/images/240*190/1976306.jpg[/IMG] Enlarge Image
WAYNE.GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA From left, Rhonda Hinther, Armando Perla and Marcy Sullivan (formerly Bell) in front of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.


Rhonda Hinther's answer was so quick -- so automatic -- it was almost like she had practised her response in the bathroom mirror beforehand.
When the conversation shifts as to why Hinther, an Oakbank product who spent the last five years as a curator of western Canadian history at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, would leave that key position in the National Capital Region to move back to Manitoba, the 35-year-old didn't flinch.
"The attraction of family and the attraction of friends," she put it simply.
Those familiar attractions, while important in the very sense of their definitions, are just two of the drawing cards for Hinther's homecoming. The third lure -- the Canadian Museum for Human Rights -- has given her a professional reason to come back home.
"I was actually hoping to stay in Winnipeg once I finished my PhD (history, 2003), but it was just hard finding long-term, meaningful work in the field here," said Hinther, who's well into her role as the head of exhibit research at the museum now under construction. Projected to bring in countless numbers of people from all over the world when it opens in 2012, the CMHR, slowly rising from the Red River gumbo near the Provencher Bridge at The Forks, is returning educated expatriates -- many who left for bigger and brighter futures -- to their southern Manitoba roots.
Call it a reverse brain drain.
Marcy Sullivan, 39, left Manitoba in 1995. A chartered account working in the warmer climes of Central America and Florida over the last 14 years, she's had a return to Canada on the brain for a while.
Though headhunters, working the corporate network on her behalf north of the border, presented Melita-born Sullivan with numerous opportunities in Alberta, she didn't budge.
Manitoba was on her mind. That was the move she wanted. "Eight years ago, I started feeling a magnet inside pulling me back to Winnipeg," she said. "Plus having girls growing up in Florida wasn't my idea of an ideal environment, (where) what you look like on the beach is more important than... well, you know."
With three daughters basking in the sun but still no employment secured back home, Sullivan decided to accept a buyout last summer, grab the parkas out of storage and return to Winnipeg.
As luck would have it, a finance management position at the museum presented itself soon after, and her hunch to come home paid off.
"Right place, right time," she added.
That phrase best sums up Armando Perla's return to Manitoba, as well. A refugee from El Salvador, the 31-year-old first came to Winnipeg 11 years ago and immediately enrolled at the University of Winnipeg, where he found a place in the human rights field. Three years later, finding himself heavily involved with the Interfaith Immigration Council and realizing he needed French to better communicate with the increasing number of African refugees he was dealing with internationally, he decided to move to Quebec.
Working stops in Guatemala and Washington, D.C., eventually led him to Sweden, where he recently picked up a master's degree in international human rights law. During his schooling, he found work as a human rights consultant at Lund University and the position kept his passport busy, too, as he travelled the world working on human rights issues in developing countries.
"I always knew I was going to come back to Canada, but I'd never thought I'd come back to Winnipeg," offered Perla, who has cousins in the city. "When I saw the researcher position advertised with the museum, I knew I had to come back. I knew I had to do it, to give back somehow."
Perla figures his nomadic lifestyle has had him pass through 25 to 30 countries in the last 10 years. Since committing to Winnipeg and the CMHR, people from around the globe have asked him why he's writing Manitoba into the next chapter of his life, when there are so many other exotic locales from which to choose.
"I'm going to be honest: This is one of the few places where I know where things are already," Perla laughed, hinting at the familiarity some take for granted at times.
"I can't really explain it, though. It just feels like home."
adam.wazny@freepress.mb.ca
Rhonda Hinther
Head, exhibit research
Hailing from Oakbank, Hinther returns to Winnipeg for the second time in seven years after a stint as a curator in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Included on Hinther's resumé is a PhD in Canadian History from McMaster University.
Armando Perla
Researcher
Originally from El Salvador, Perla came to Winnipeg as a refugee in 1999. He has studied law and human rights law around world, working for organizations committed to promoting equality for all global citizens.
Marcy Sullivan (Bell)
Manager, finance
The Melita product returns after nearly 15 years away. Holding a business degree from the University of Manitoba and a number of accounting designations, she'll not only lead the accounting team but will also work closely with the chief financial officer in developing the museum's financial structure.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 18, 2010 B1

[Biff]

Museum takes dramatic shape
Construction method breaking new ground

By: Murray McNeill

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights construction in progress at the end of March 2010.

DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights construction in progress at the end of March 2010.

It's a sunny, unseasonably warm afternoon in late March, and two of the top officials on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights project are leading a small group of visitors on an informal tour of the sprawling construction site.

The seven-member troop -- four from the museum and three with the Free Press -- stops at the base of one of the towering, black concrete walls in the Hall of Hope portion of the $310-million museum.
Artist's rendering of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Enlarge Image

Artist's rendering of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
Facts and figures

About the Canadian Museum for Human Rights construction project:

Construction work got underway in April of last year and should be complete in spring 2012.

The total area of the building will be 260,000 square feet.

Cost of the building and contents is pegged at $310 million. The cost of the building alone is $205 million.

The main portion of the glass-enshrouded structure will be 12 storeys high, and the glass-covered Tower of Hope will be about 23 storeys. A good comparison is the two MTS buildings near Portage and Main. The taller one is roughly the same height as the Tower of Hope, and the smaller one is the same size as the main portion of the museum.

The glass 'cloud' that will envelop the complex will sit on 135 1.8-metre-wide concrete caissons and about 370 smaller, precast concrete piles. It will be attached to an elaborate network of steel trusses.

The sections of glass used to build the 'cloud' around the building, as well as the Tower of Hope, are being manufactured in Germany, and the steel trusses are being imported from Europe.

The cement, the reinforcing steel, and the stone, lumber, gypsum and aluminum products are all manufactured in Canada.

There are between 150 and 175 construction workers on the project at the moment. By July, when work on the structural-steel portion of the building is to begin, those numbers will swell to between 225 and 250.

-- Source: Canadian Museum for Human Rights

"You're now starting to see it take shape, and it's just stunning!" exclaims museum CEO Stuart Murray as he looks up -- waaaay up -- to the top of the 56-metre-high wall.

Anyone walking or driving by the construction site at Provencher Boulevard and Waterfront Drive probably realizes this museum is going to be a big deal when it's finished in the spring or summer of 2012.

But Murray says you don't get a true sense of how physically imposing it will be until you stand at the base of one of those black walls.

"For anyone who comes on the site, it's just jaw-dropping. They all say, 'Wow! I had no idea it's going to be this big!'"

And the Hall of Hope won't even be the tallest part of the uniquely shaped, castle-like structure. The Tower of Hope section will be nearly twice as high -- a towering 100 metres -- when it's finished in about 18 months.

Todd Craigen, construction manager for general contractor PCL Constructors Canada Ltd. and the other senior project official on the tour -- says this year is going to be a big one for the CMHC project.

"The building is really going to come to life (this year). People are going to get a good sense of the scale of the building."

Right now, the museum is only about one-third built. In fact, April 22 will be the one-year anniversary of when the first shovel hit the ground.

What passersby are seeing these days is the concrete walls for two of the four main "roots" of the building -- Root A and Root D -- and the base for the Tower of Hope.

The Hall of Hope is in Root A, which is the section closest to Provencher Boulevard. That's also the section where the classrooms will be located, Murray says.

Craigen said the concrete walls for Roots C and D should be up by the end of this summer. And in July, crews will begin piecing together the network of steel trusses that will anchor the glass "cloud" to the structure.

Although the concrete base for the tower is already taking shape, it will be about another year before workers begin erecting the glass portion of the tower.

Murray says the glass sections for the tower and the "cloud" are being manufactured in Europe. But it was a local firm -- E.H. Price -- that tested a sample of the glass in its local state-of-art cold-weather chamber to make sure it could withstand Winnipeg's harsh winter climate.

"The glass's performance was excellent," he adds.

Craigen has been with PCL for 15 years, and he says this is far and away the most challenging project he's worked on. In fact, he maintains it's probably one of the most complicated and sophisticated construction projects ever undertaken in North America.

"This is a very complex building. It has very complex geometry," he says, noting some of the walls are not only curved, but cone shaped.

"It's been an engineering feat to design this building, and it's an engineering feat to build this building."

But despite the complexity of the project, things have gone amazingly well so far.

"We're on time and we're absolutely on budget," Murray says.

"There have been a few bumps along the way, but nothing insurmountable," Craigen says. "And even winter helped us out. It didn't handcuff us like it could have."

He says there were only three days where it was too cold (minus 25 degrees Celsius or colder) to operate the big tower cranes -- and no days where it was too cold for the tradesmen to work.

"We've got the toughest workforce in North America," he declares.

Another reason things have gone so smoothly is that, according to Craigen, this is the first large-scale construction project in Canada to use building-information-modelling (BIM) technology from start to finish.

BIM uses sophisticated computer software to create a three-dimensional model of a building. The model is then used as a guide to design and construct the real building, and to detect and resolve any design or construction problems that might arise before the actual construction work begins.

Craigen says he couldn't image trying to piece together the complex network of steel trusses and the glass "cloud" without the use of a 3-D model.

"It would have taken years to figure that out (without it)."

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca



Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 6, 2010 B3

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by beatlesque

i checked out the model here in vancouver and spoke to one of the museum execs - as suspected before (and can be seen in the model) the plan now calls for no glass roof because of the risk from leaks, etc.

The leak potential is just an excuse - it is a design change to save money.

[1ajs]

all roofs get water damage at some point

[Brokenhead]

Went to the site today, and grabbed some pics. Enjoy

[BigG]

Did you take these pictures around 4 pm? I was driving by and chances are that you were the one that I saw. That's my daily route.