Concrete Thinking: Betonwaves at Plug In ICA

What does Canada’s reconciliation project look like in art and architecture? This fall, one answer can be found at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, in the form of a new installation by Louise Witthöft and Rodney LaTourelle, created with the help of the new Indigenous owners of one of Winnipeg’s iconic buildings.

Founded in 1972, Plug In is housed in the Buhler Centre, just north of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Plug In’s east face looks across Memorial Boulevard at another significant structure: the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Building. Constructed a century ago, late in HBC’s transformation from fur trading monopoly into modern department store chain, The Bay has come to be seen locally as a monument to the processes that disempowered Indigenous peoples across western Canada. 

By 2023, both the HBC and the building had outlived their purpose. Ownership of the building was transferred to Manitoba’s Southern Chiefs’ Organization (SCO), a coalition of 32 Anishinaabe and Dakota Nations. The SCO moved quickly to begin transforming the building into the residential and cultural centre Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn (“it is visible” in Anishinaabemowin). So The Bay might be seen today as standing at an inflection point between colonial and post-colonial narratives.

In contrast to Plug In’s façade of metal panels and glass, The Bay is an immense reinforced concrete structure, with a 15,000-square-metre footprint. The renovation, led by Number TEN Architectural Group, defies the building’s seeming immutability by coring out a central atrium to create a skylit cultural hub. This process generates a tremendous amount of construction waste; and that’s where Witthöft & LaTourelle’s project comes in.

As designers and artists, Berlin-based Witthöft and LaTourelle have for over a decade centered a vein of their work on concrete’s poetics, and its intersection with modern social narratives. Their project Betonwaves repurposed rubble from the massive former East German Haus der Statistik, binding it together with geopolymer cement—an aluminosilicate-rich waste material whose manufacture can produce 90% less CO₂ compared to Portland cement. 

This year, as part of teaching Plug In’s Summer Institute (a mentorship program for artists), Witthöft & LaTourelle brought Betonwaves to Winnipeg. Geopolymers are used to bind demolition wastes donated by the SCO from the HBC building. Witthöft & LaTourelle formed this material into brick-sized blocks, arraying these into irregular wythes that exploit the experimental nature of the geopolymer—it’s subject to some deterioration—to evoke a ruin, rather than a monument. Colour is integral to the artists’ practice; in 2010, they designed the permanent colour installation that brightens the Buhler Centre’s pale interior. In Betonwaves, shades of blue paint applied to the bricks evoke sky rather than earth. Mirrors inserted between blocks further dematerialize the makeshift wall. Salvaged slabs of Tyndall stone punctuate the installation. This collection of masonry creates a space of encounter, while modulating views to The Bay.

Until this year, The Bay’s massive concrete structure seemed to embody the processes of colonialism and render them indestructible. Betonwaves’ creative intervention demonstrates that—with the right strategies—that legacy can indeed be deconstructed, and a fresh narrative built in its place.

Lawrence Bird, MRAIC, is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg. 

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