Ralph Applebaum Associates

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration, and future of human rights. Its aims are to provide a national hub for human rights learning and discovery, and to launch a new era of global human rights leadership.

The museum’s signature architecture creates a path for the visitor from darkness to light. The journey starts in the museum’s “roots,” which rises up from the ground of The Forks, a national historic site that has served as a meeting place for thousands of years. Visitors ascend through the galleries via a series of ramps, encountering human rights stories and the people who lived them along the way. The path leads visitors into the Tower of Hope, a 23-story illuminated beacon symbolizing enlightenment.

RAA planned and designed the permanent exhibition, which is spread over eleven galleries. Visitors are introduced to core concepts of human rights across cultures and time. Indigenous principles of rights and responsibilities are explored. A look at Canada’s human rights journey highlights struggles and achievements in developing its human rights culture and legal systems. Other galleries focus on the Holocaust and genocide, the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the work of the United Nations. Contemporary topics are featured in a gallery that includes stories about the work of today’s human rights defenders.

In designing the project, RAA sought to transform an abstract concept of human rights into tangible understanding of what human rights are, can be, and should be.