On June 13, 2024, Arthur Erickson?s beloved Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia reopened after 18 months of closure. During this time, its iconic Great Hall was entirely rebuilt from the ground up. The epic reconstruction was steered by Vancouver architect Nick Milkovich, whom Erickson first hired in 1968 and who worked on the original building.
Here?s Milkovich?s account of the project, drawn from an interview with Adele Weder.

The Museum of Anthropology was recently reopened after an 18-month-long seismic upgrade that involved demolishing and completely rebuilding the Great Hall.
Since the Museum of Anthropology was built, the knowledge of earthquake impact has changed; the building was about 25 per cent of what it should be for current codes. The building was already showing signs of deterioration: the plastic skylights leaked like hell, steel reinforcements in the concrete were starting to show, things like that. The Great Hall was the worst off. We started out by scanning the building components. That?s when we discovered that the concrete columns were actually hollow. Fifty years ago, the lifting capacity of the construction equipment was more limited; it would have been difficult or impossible to raise the largest column, which was 50 feet high. So that?s probably why they were thinned out and hollowed. The engineering consultant had said that it would come down fast in an earthquake?and that?s before we found out that the columns we...