The following is an excerpt from World Architecture News (www.wan.com) – 2008.

Windsor, Ontario architectural firm, J.P. Thomson Architects, has proposed an unsolicited concept for a new museum near the city’s waterfront. A derelict existing building has been adapted to provide a centre piece and point of destination for a unique local neighbourhood. The site is rich in history. Over the past 100 years, this area has been highly charged with both economic activity and local character and is as apt a location as any to house this important institution.

The theme of the project seeks to create a facility which encapsulates the diverse and dynamic nature of our own society and embodies this existence in one singular notion. It has been named Movement. Envisioned as Windsor’s Museum of Change, Movement will showcase the objects, people and events that have shaped our city’s unique and evolving culture. Within this context, the museum has an even more important role – to explore contemporary issues that will provide provocative thinking about the nature of our future. The museum will act as an ever-changing space able to adapt, transform and reconfigure. It will act as a window into our own lives and will be driven by experiential exhibits, which elicit both emotion and discourse.

Conceptually, the design of the building draws on this notion of movement. A large addition is designed along the south face of the existing building – which is transformed and given a new life. The building and the surrounding site is conceived as playing a part in this idea of movement. In order to enliven and animate the spatial experience of the museum, consideration is given to the way in which the building responds to its thematic systems as well as its contextual environment. The scales of city, site, building and exhibit are imaginatively woven together to produce a place of constant activity.

Lying to the east of downtown, the intent of the project is to create a facility which not only re-connects to the city core, but which also acts as a catalyst for additional growth of local neighborhoods. The goal is to create new symbiotic relationships within the city core and to increase tourism in this area which already has multiple smaller destinations and points of interest.