The Vancouver Art Gallery’s pending upgrade will comprise a top-heavy stack of

If the intention behind unveiling the striking conceptual design for the new Vancouver Art Gallery was to get people talking, then the mission has been an unbridled success.

Social media was abuzz – with praise, horror and everything in between – after gallery executives revealed the long-awaited design of its new, clearly conspicuous and patently polarizing, 28,800-square-metre facility on Tuesday. In a nod to the Royal Ontario Museum and the Ontario Gallery of Art-which received a respective $42 million and $24 million from the feds-Bartles added, “We feel very confident”.

Unveiled earlier this week after a long gestation period that included extensive community consultation with artists as well as the city, the design for the proposed $350 million dollar (Canadian) museum offers inspired interplay between the vertical and the horizontal, solidity and transparency, and indoor and outdoor environments.

“Looking back at the last several decades there has been a major shift in how art museums define and enact their missions”, said gallery director Kathleen Bartels. By lifting the bulk of the structure high above the street, the design allows light and air to filter down to an active, open-air courtyard below. The first two ground-level floors will be mostly transparent, in an attempt to engage pedestrians at the street level. The seventh level with its floor-to-ceiling windows features a large terrace where visitors can take in views of the city, mountains and ocean.

Wood is a clever choice for building material.

“The urbanistic concept is based on the contrast between the low-rise framing along the street block and the taller and more sculptural building in the middle of an open and accessible garden and square”, said Jacques Herzog in a statement.

The city, which is leasing the land to the VAG for the project (with an estimated opening date of 2021), is keen to see how the public reacts to the design before moving forward with the estimated $350-million project. The main exhibition space begins on the fifth level. Escalators – accessible from the courtyard or that lobby – whisk visitors upstairs. They would be similar in height to the gallery.

There is room above the seventh-floor gallery for further expansion.

After an extensive global search process, the Vancouver Art Gallery selected Herzog & de Meuron as its architect in April 2014.

Outstanding wood issues notwithstanding, Herzog de Meuron’s partners know what they’re doing. A dynamic part of Vancouver, the neighbourhood is set to change dramatically in the next ten years and the Gallery is poised to expand the heart of the city by connecting central downtown with East Vancouver.