National Gallery of Canada

Safdie's competition-winning design of 1983 turned the gallery's site on Nepean Point into a single controlling gesture: a great glazed tower, faceted and stepped like a crystal, that repeats in miniature the copper-clad spire of the Library of Parliament visible across the street, so the museum and the seat of government appear to be in conversation. Pink granite quarried in Saguenay clads the solid portions of the building; the glazed Great Hall behind the tower runs on a diagonal axis toward the Parliament Buildings, and a 116-metre colonnaded ramp leads visitors up from the entrance in a deliberate, processional ascent. An interior courtyard, the Water Court, and a landscaped Garden Court reference the Canadian wilderness inside the museum. Built for the federal government to replace an over-crowded 1960s gallery, it opened on 21 May 1988 at a construction cost of about $162 million and now holds more than 93,000 works, including the country's largest collection of Canadian and Indigenous art.