Wisdom Magazine: The Man in the Red Suit
Alberta Commercial Report: Douglas J. Cardinal Architect Ltd.
Award Magazine: Saskatchewan Indian Federated College

The Man in the Red Suit, An Interview with Douglas Cardinal

Wisdom: Grande Prairie Regional College Magazine, Spring 2003
by Lynne Ness

The radical, activist young Canadian native who was hired to design and build Grande Prairie Regional College in the early 70s stood out in the board room where the contracts were signed. He did not blend in. He was a native; he was an artist; his black hair fell beyond his shoulders; he wore a red suit. And he had just designed a spectacular building, which would be built on the banks of the Bear Creek reservoir, a building architectural critics have described as "a giant earth sculpture."

Architect Douglas Cardinal says not fitting in is part of the price which must be paid in order to reveal one's creativity. He has strong ideas about the source and the strength of creativity - and he has found his own unique path as an architect, one which draws deeply on his ancestry.

"Creativity by its nature is not a group experience, it is an individual experience. Creative people in this hierarchical Western system in which we live have a tough time. Creativity is the force of change, it upsets us, it rocks the boat. It doesn't come from reason and logic, it comes from feeling and intuition, and is beyond that which is already known. It comes from looking within."

As an architect, Douglas Cardinal may find his creativity within himself, but his buildings are also the realized dreams of his clients, and the artist's response to the location. "When you go to the site, the building is already there. You just have to un-conceal it."

The buildings of Douglas Cardinal are recognizable world wide. Each of them has exceeded the boundaries of what was "known" and drawn its engineers, bricklayers, and computer technology over the edge of secure knowledge into the realm of the "impossible." His buildings are a stunning balance of an age-old oneness with nature and the most modern technology. "You don't operate from reality on something like this; you operate from commitment." Cardinal designs have necessitated their own technologies, their own building methods. Most of all, they have required creative response from all disciplines involved.

"All of man's creativity was the result of people looking inward into themselves," Cardinal points out. "They never got it from textbooks. Like Einstein, for example, lived in a Newton's world. He had to ignore what everyone else around him knew and believed. He looked inward, and there he discovered all these theories of relativity, which change forever our whole way of looking at the world."

The native elders teach that all knowledge is within yourself, that an individual is the product of all those who have gone before, the outcome of millions of years of life, so within you is all of the past. But you are also the grandparent of all the generations that will come after you, so the future is within you already. Within each of us is the past, the present and the future.

"All great inventions, all the great achievements of man, have come from individual insights. And where did they have these insights? It came from themselves, at a moment when they were totally there, at the past, present and future, and they got a glimpse of the future. And then they brought that into the world."

Cardinal learned as a young man that he alone carried the responsibility for what he would do with his life, how he would nurture his creative potential. He had already excelled in school and been accepted at the age of 18 to the faculty of architecture at UBC, only to be discouraged from continuing by a Dean who told Douglas Cardinal he had the "wrong family background" for the profession. It was an experience that could have silenced a creative nature.

Then, when he was 21, he was in a major car accident, broke his back in 3 places, and "wasn't there" for a while. "That made me realize that life is pretty tenuous. Then when I came back, I couldn't buy into the common belief that we are almost immortal. I could not accept the way we waste our lives, the way we treat other people. I suppose I was lucky to realize at 21 that I had no time to fool around with all that fear and all that nonsense. I realized that no matter how I tried to protect myself, by accident I might meet my maker at any moment, so why not go for it!"

"I think that made the difference in my life."

Douglas Cardinal studied with great architects, and he studied with native elders. He learned from them; he worked with them. "But it is not that they taught me anything. It is that being with them, listening to them, hearing what they said resonated in me. They awakened the knowledge that is already there in me. I do not look at learning as something that you pour into your ear and eventually you are completely filled up with knowledge. I have never looked at it that way. I think all knowledge is within yourself. And some people awaken that knowledge within you."

"It is a different way of knowledge. I appreciate the different world views - the hierarchical, the western world view, and the indigenous world view that is quite different, as express in language, culture and philosophy.

"My profession has me operate in a hierarchical world view which is very left sided - based on logic and reason. It is fine for me, carrying out architecture and working within the structures that are there, but I have affinity more to the indigenous way of thinking which is based on the belief that every person is noble, everyone, everything is to be respected."

Cardinal firmly believes that buildings affect us, that we are products of our environment. "If you create an environment like New York or Detroit you will create brutal people because that is a brutal environment. I believe we are products of our environment because that is how we have evolved. If you created an environment of boxes, you will start thinking like boxes, and categorizing. I think it is a responsibility to create an environment that is more natural for people."

The building he created as Grande Prairie Regional College has now inspired learning and teaching for three decades. It is a building that fulfilled the dream of a community, a dream led by the first President of the College, Dr. Henry Anderson, who insisted that "An educational institution must have a soul." It is a building that fulfills the architectural vision of Douglas Cardinal, whose belief that "people should celebrate life and nature, and enjoy its forms" has resulted in a career of buildings which celebrate those forms.

The important teachers, the mentors in Douglas Cardinal's life, as well as native elders, include those who have awakened the buildings within Douglas Cardinal - his clients. "I learned so much from each of these clients - and particularly from this community (Grande Prairie.) The trust they had in such a young 'character', with radical ideas. Without their trust, I really doubt I would be doing the work I am doing, you see."

What Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal is doing, what he has been doing in the 30 years since he signed those documents committing his creativity to the building of Grande Prairie Regional College, is changing modern architecture world-wide, challenging accepted boundaries of what is possible. He is exploring that unlimited possibility of what we do not know; he has learned the secret of creativity.

"I think my greatest building is still inside me."

- Lynne Ness

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