The Globe and Mail

Edmonton has never been much of a looker in the architecture department. Canadian author Mordecai Richler once even wrote that the capital city was a "jumble of used-building lots where the spare office towers and box-shaped apartment buildings and cinder-block motels discarded in the construction of real cities have been abandoned to waste away in the cruel Prairie winter." But now, many are hoping the city can begin casting off its reputation as architectural backwater with a much-anticipated $40-million revamp of the Edmonton Art Gallery. Yesterday, four design proposals from world-class architects were released to the public, and all quickly drew praise from the city's artistic community and media.