PROJECT Maisonneuve Library, restoration and extension

ARCHITECT EVOQ Architecture

PROJECT Octogone Library, transformation and extension

ARCHITECT Anne Carrier Architecture in consortium with Les architectes Labonté Marcil

TEXT Odile Hénault

PHOTOS Adrien Williams

Late last spring, as I was lining up outside Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, waiting for the doors to open, I started a casual conversation with the person nearest me. At one point, totally out of the blue, she asked: “Have you visited Montreal’s new libraries?” Before I had a chance to answer, she went on: “You know, they are the result of architectural competitions. A great system!” I couldn’t help laughing and thinking this was the moment I had long been waiting for… The word was spreading! The news was reaching the public! 

Over the past three decades, the Quebec government has gradually set in place an enviable competition system for cultural buildings—that is, museums, theatres, interpretation centres, and libraries. It results from a policy adopted in June 1992 by the province’s Ministry of Culture, which aimed at “holding public competitions for cultural facility projects presented by municipalities and organizations and produced with the assistance of government grants, the cost of which is over $2 million” (Ministère de la Culture du Québec, La politique culturelle du Québec, 1992). 

A new cultural landscape

Thanks to this policy, a new cultural landscape has gradually emerged across Quebec’s major cities as well as in its smaller municipalities. Competitions have been behind the design of at least 16 theatres, 20 museums of various sizes, and numerous interpretative pavilions. As far as libraries are concerned, the wave of competitions started in 2001 with the small Bibliothèque de Châteauguay (by Atelier TAG with JLP architectes). Since then, more than 20 libraries were the object of competitions. Several of these new cultural institutions have gone on to win awards, and to be covered in journals such as Canadian Architect. 

The benefits to the public are obvious, even though the average Montrealer (with the exception of my theatre-going friend) is mostly unaware of the competition process at work. Needless to say, architects have gained a lot from this policy, which has allowed them to explore ideas and concepts they might not have been able to address in a standard RFP system.  

Two competitions 

It is often presumed that while design competitions may be suitable for new-builds, the complexities of additions and renovations put them out of reach for competitions. However, the contrary is proving to be the case: quite a few of Quebec’s library competitions have been for additions or the quasi-total transformation of existing buildings. 

This is the case for two recently-inaugurated amenities in Montreal: the Maisonneuve Library and L’Octogone both fit into this latter category. They are also among the largest of the city’s 45 branch public libraries, including seven that were the objects of architectural competitions. Both Maisonneuve and L’Octogone existed as libraries before 2017, when separate competitions were launched to renovate and expand them. 

The Maisonneuve Library

The Maisonneuve Library is a rather unique case, since it is sited in a historic City Hall—part of a grand City Beautiful plan carried by a few enlightened entrepreneurs, who developed this sector of Montreal at the turn of the 20th century. Opened in 1912, their new City Hall only filled its role for a short period as the heavily indebted Cité de Maisonneuve was amalgamated to Montreal in 1918. The Beaux-Arts building, designed by architect Louis-Joseph Cajetan Dufort, remained standing through the last century, relatively unaltered—thankfully—by its successive occupants. In 1981, it became part of Montreal’s public library network.

Four teams were selected to take part in the Maisonneuve Library competition: in situ atelier d’architecture + DMA architects; Saucier + Perrotte/DFS inc.; Chevalier Morales Architectes; and Dan Hanganu architectes + EVOQ Architecture. All four teams are considered to be among Quebec’s most creative architectural firms, a reputation they acquired mostly through competitions. They were paid the pre-tax sum of $82,000 to take part in the competition, a sum which was included in the winning team’s eventual contract. 

The challenge for the four teams was to triple the size of the 1,240-square-metre original facility with a contemporary intervention that would pay homage to the former City Hall. The Hanganu-EVOQ team had a definite advantage, EVOQ being one of very few offices in Quebec with a strong expertise in heritage preservation. Their parti was therefore centred on restoring the historic building (then in an advanced state of disrepair) to its original splendour, and treating it as a jewel inserted at the centre of a sober, contemporary composition. The alignment of the new curtain walls and the rhythm of a brise-soleil took their cues from the existing neoclassical colonnade.

On the exterior, stone façades and monumental doors were carefully restored. On the interior, similar attention was paid to the original plaster mouldings, wood panelling, and mosaic floors. The former piano nobile’s marble staircase and its two imposing stained-glass features were painstakingly restored by a team of remarkable artisans, who still work using traditional construction methods. 

Every effort was made by EVOQ—which now includes the late Dan Hanganu’s former team—to ensure the library would be fully accessible to all. This led to the design of a circular entrance pavilion, projecting from the east wing. An architectural promenade takes one from the new entrance, through the historic building, and onwards to the west wing. A sheer delight. The subtly handled transition points between old and new celebrate the original 1900s monument and the skill of its builders.

Slightly less convincing is the west wing’s shelf wall, visible from Ontario Street. It reflects an influence from Sou Fujimoto Architects’ Musashino Art University Museum & Library in Tokyo (2010), with its striking wooden shelving doubling as wall structure. In both cases, aesthetics seem to have been chosen over utility as any books stored in these areas are challenging to access.

While intent on keeping alive the memory of the past, the local librarians simultaneously embraced the progressive outlook of the International Federation of Library Associations and Federations (IFLA). The Maisonneuve Library looks clearly to the future, particularly in its mission is to improve local levels of digital literacy. Gone are the administrative offices hidden away from the public: staff members wheel mobile stations around the building, plugging into a large array of floor outlets. The library’s offerings also now include a playful children’s area, a Media Lab, and a small roof garden. Silence is no longer the rule, except for in a few enclosed spaces. 

Octogone Library

Another major library competition was also launched in 2017: this one for Octogone Library, in a totally distinct environment situated towards the western tip of the Montreal Island. A suburban street pattern is prevalent in the borough and the site of the library is off a banal commercial strip. The area’s most interesting feature is perhaps the adjoining Parc Félix Leclerc, with its gentle landscape and large weeping willows. 

The original Octogone Library building was the outcome of decades-long advocacy efforts by the local community, which did, finally, lead to the government commitment for a public library in 1983. The following year, a low-scale, rather Brutalist building opened its doors to the public. The architects were Bisson, Hébert et Bertomeu. The long-awaited amenity was named Centre culturel de l’Octogone in reference to its role in the community and to its geometry. 

When the 2017 competition was launched for a renovation and addition to the existing building, the resulting proposals aimed to perpetuate the memory—and the name—of the 1984 building. Again, four teams were selected to participate in the competition: Atelier Big City with L’Oeuf; BGLA with Blouin Tardif architects; EVOQ Architecture with Groupe A; and finally, Anne Carrier architecture in consortium with Labonté Marcil, the winning team. The octagonal foundations were deemed solid enough to handle the loads of a new construction, but the existing walls presented competitors with a number of difficulties.

Carrier and Labonté Marcil’s entry was, as noted by the jury, a “vigorous” and “joyous” response to the program. The team had opted not to adhere too closely to the original octagonal plan and to refer instead to a far more significant symbol for LaSalle citizens, the 1827 Fleming Mill. The project’s most striking feature is a central helicoidal stair, or “hub”, which immediately attracts attention as one enters from either side of the new building. 

The second-level plan is laid out to evoke a mill’s three giant “blades” revolving around a central pivot, which culminates in a quiet, more secluded, circular space enlivened by an airy artwork. Produced by artist Karilee Fuglem, this piece alludes to L’Octogone’s extensive collection of graphic novels and comics—the largest such collection in Montreal’s library network.

Conclusion

While architectural competitions have yet to spread across Canada, Quebec can boast a rich repository of experience in this domain. At the end of three decades, and with dozens of projects successfully built through the competition process, the province’s landscape of libraries, theatres, and museums is obvious proof that competitions are worth the effort. 

Of course, there are improvements to be made. The process has gradually been burdened with overly complicated programmatic specifications—some preliminary documents are now up to several hundred pages long. The constraint of tight budgetary commitments in a highly volatile context can also seriously hinder creativity. But in the end, despite the need to revisit and simplify the process, a healthy competition culture has emerged, not just in Montreal and Quebec City, but all over the province. 

At 32 years old, Quebec’s architecture policy is entering middle-age, and it’s perhaps worth considering how it might be adjusted to prompt even more innovative, mature expressions of architecture. Can programs be loosened to allow for more daring concepts? Is there a place for open design competitions, creating opportunities for younger generations of architects? Despite some shortcomings experienced over the last three decades, Quebec has successfully put competitions to the test. And the rest of Canada could learn from it.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect. She was the professional advisor for two pilot competitions that led to the adoption of the Quebec Ministry of Culture’s 1992 policy on architectural competitions.

Maisonneuve Library

CLIENTS Ville de Montréal and Arrondissement Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve | ARCHITECT TEAM EVOQ—Gilles Prud’homme, Sylvie Peguiron, Marianne Leroux, Georges Drolet, Nathan Godlovitch, Anne-Catherine Richard, Lynda Labrecque, Simona Rusu, Alexis Charbonneau | ARCHITECT (HISTORIC BUILDING, 1911) Louis-Joseph Cajetan Dufort | LANDSCAPE civiliti | ENVELOPE ULYS Collectif  | STRUCTURAL NCK | CIVIL Génipur | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Pageau Morel | ENVELOPE/QUALITY CONTROL UL CLEB | ELEVATOR EXIM | DOORS, HARDWARE SPECIALISTS ARD | COMMISSIONING Cima+ | FURNITURE/SIGNAGE/MULTIMEDIA GSMProject | ERGONOMICS Vincent Ergonomie | LIGHTING LightFactor | SUSTAINABILITY WSP | ACOUSTICS Octave | METAL/HISTORIC DOORS M&B Métalliers | MOSAIC Artès Métiers d’art | ORNAMENTAL PLASTERS Plâtres Artefact | MASONRY Maçonnerie Rainville et Frères | CONSERVATOR/MASONRY Trevor Gillingwater  | STONECUTTERS Alexandre, Tailleurs de pierres + sculpteurs | STAINED GLASS Studio du verre  | ARTIST (PUBLIC ART) Clément de Gaulejac | AREA 3,594 m2 | construction bUDGET $38.6 M | COMPLETION June 2023

Octogone Library

CLIENTS Ville de Montréal and arrondissement lasalle | ARCHITECT TEAM AC/A—Anne Carrier (FIRAC), Robert Boily, Martin L’Hébreux, Patricia Pronovost, Mathieu St-Amant, Andrée-Ève Gaudreault, Brenda Côté. LES ARCHITECTES LABONTÉ MARCIL IN CONSORTIUM—Pierre Labonté, Jean Marcil, Andréanne Gaudet, MICHEL DESMARAIS | Structural/mechanical/electrical EXP | LANDSCAPE Rousseau Lefevre  | INTERIORS Anne Carrier Architecture/les Architectes Labonté Marcil en consortium | CONTRACTOR Décarel | ergonomics VINCENT ERGONOMIE | acoustics Octave | SCENOGRAPHY GO MULTIMEDIA | aRTISTS (PUBLIC ART) CLAUDE LAMARCHE (1984), KARILEE FUGLEM (2024) | AREA 4,500 m2 | BUDGET $28.6 M | COMPLETION October 2024

As appeared in the November 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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PROJECT HEC Montréal Hélène-Desmarais Building, Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECT Provencher_Roy

TEXT Olivier Vallerand

PHOTOS Ema Peter

Montreal-based Provencher_Roy has long demonstrated its aptitude for creating dynamic education facilities and university buildings, dating back to one of their breakthrough projects, UQAM’s J.-A.-De Sève building (1998). The lessons learned from this wealth of work are brightly visible in the Hélène-Desmarais Building, the new centre for Montreal’s post-secondary business school, HEC, in the heart of the city’s commercial core. 

Led by then-partner Alain Compéra, Anne Rouaud, and Gerardo Pérez, the architect team transformed an odd-shaped downtown site into a building that feels at once intimate and on-brand with HEC’s executive-oriented profile. The design takes inspiration from HEC’s role as an early-twentieth-century institution of the primarily French-speaking side of downtown: in 2000, its original building on Square Viger was transformed in the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec’s Archives Centre, by Dan Hanganu and Provencher_Roy. Since that time, the institution has operated from two buildings at the Université de Montréal campus, on the other side of the mountain—a Brutalist one designed by Roland Dumais and recently renovated by Provencher_Roy, the other a new-build by Dan Hanganu and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architectes. The new space repositions the school closer to the economic centre of the city, in a historic setting neighbouring Saint Patrick’s Basilica.

The design process built on models of collaborative learning and experimentation developed by the business school itself, which HEC had iteratively explored in its previous buildings. Working in collaboration with HEC research group Mosaic, Provencher_Roy undertook a co-design process that included a full-day workshop with HEC faculty and students, neighbours (including church members), heritage experts and creative professionals, followed by regular discussions with these groups. This process allowed the team to understand neighbours’ fears about the occupation of an empty space owned by the basilica. They worked closely with stakeholders, as well as with engineers, city staff, and government representatives, to develop a shared framework and vision for a contemporary addition to the city that would be integrated in the urban fabric. 

The building occupies a comb-shaped site created by the combination of land ceded by the church and two privately owned lots. Throughout the design process, the team had to adjust their design, as HEC didn’t know which private owners would accept to sell their lots. Reacting to the building’s siting—anchored in the heart of a city block—the team imagined it as forming a campus with the basilica to the north, at the top of the comb. The teeth of the comb, popping out onto Beaver Hall, mask the service sides of adjacent buildings. A planned next phase of the lot redevelopment will redesign the basilica’s forecourt, resulting in better connections to both the new HEC building and De la Gauchetière Street. 

To further complicate the design, the site sits on a steep slope, with nearly nine metres (two full floors) of height difference between De
la Gauchetière to the east of the building and René-Lévesque Boulevard to the west. This is negotiated by introducing a main circulation axis that steps up from De la Gauchetière, dividing the overall massing of the building into two sections. These volumes were further refined by thinking of the roof as a fifth façade, visible from the tall buildings surrounding it. Mechanical elements are carefully screened, and the top of the facility treated as a landscape of green roofs and terraces accessible from different floors. More shaping occurred in response to the Church’s requests that views be protected, and neighbours’ access across the site preserved. The resulting sculptural form creates a diversity of viewpoints and experiences both inside and outside. This renders it impossible to fully comprehend the building at a glance—and yet, easily understandable as one circulates through it. 

The interior clarity is achieved by two horizontal circulation axes. These visually connect the interior to the city, and provide for clear views of the vertically stacked program elements: a restaurant on the lower floor, conference and lecture rooms above, followed by classrooms, floors dedicated to continuing education, and foundation and administration offices at the top. Throughout the building, circulation areas and informal collaborative working spaces are positioned along the façades. The composition is anchored by a monumental stair on the first floors, connecting to a more contained sculptural stair on the upper floors. Contrasting black and white walls on each side of the feature stair subtly divide the space. This constellation of events and nodes, all consistently linked to views of the city, make wayfinding easy, despite the building’s unusual shape.

Walking through all the informal working spaces is enough to make anyone jealous of HEC students—even before going into the classrooms. These are carefully planned, based on many years of experimentation in HEC’s other buildings, and informed by lessons learned during the Covid disruptions. The classrooms and formal meeting spaces integrate hybrid teaching and collaborative tools, including webcams and screens on every wall of many rooms. U-shaped fixed configurations and modular tables allow for close interaction between teachers and students. In addition to a traditional 300-seat main auditorium with glazed walls to the circulation spaces, the building includes a “deconstructed” auditorium designed to teach entrepreneurial communication skills, mimicking situations in which students might be asked to work during their professional careers. 

Throughout the building, shiny stretched ceilings and mirrored walls provide a visual sense of expansiveness. Fritted glass similarly creates continuity between walls and façades on the white side of the building. The fritted glass doubles as passive shading, playing a role in the building’s energy efficiency strategy—an important requirement from HEC even before the adoption of the most recent building code, with its more stringent energy-savings measures. Instead of curtain walls, highly insulated composite walls were designed and prototyped; the resulting modular system helped with the rationalization and constructability of the building’s sculptural form. A geothermal system results in smaller mechanical equipment needs, increasing the accessible areas of the building’s roofscape.

Subtle gestures are integrated throughout, connecting with both the history of the site and of the institution. For instance, maple links the new building to HEC’s other facilities in Montreal. Trees from the site, which had to be removed during construction, were reused in furniture for the facility. Outdoor furnishings were designed using stones from the former St. Bridget shelter, a building demolished in the late 1970s, whose foundations are inscribed on the ground floor of the new building. 

Provencher_Roy’s site-responsive design promises to become, with time, a central meeting point for the Montreal business community, and an important chapter in the school’s proud architectural history. Once again, HEC teaches here the importance of investing in architecture: both for fostering the collaborations that are at the heart of business, and for expressing the institution’s longstanding role as a civic leader.

Olivier Vallerand is an Associate Professor at the École de design, Université de Montréal.

CLIENT HEC Montréal | ARCHITECT TEAM Alain Compéra (FIRAC), Anne Rouaud, Gerardo Pérez, Claude Provencher (FIRAC), Henry Cho, Jonathan Bélisle, Olivier Chabot, Guillaume Martel-Trudel | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL Consortium SDK/MHA | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Pageau Morel/Bouthillette Parizeau in Consortium | LANDSCAPE Provencher_Roy | INTERIORS Provencher_Roy | WAYFINDING Arium Design | PROJECT MANAGER WSP Canada | CONTRACTOR Magil Construction | AREA 24,000 m2 | BUDGET $160 M | COMPLETION September 2023

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 105.5 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.46 m3/m2/year 

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For the longest time, Quebec’s schools, like many schools in Canada, were associated with humdrum architecture. This was not particularly because of the architects involved (often a stable roster of firms), but because of unimaginative programs, poor budgets, and overemphasis on security issues. Flat roofs were the norm—as were artificially lit corridors, predictable classrooms, and paved yards surrounded with chain-link fencing.

And then, on November 7, 2017, totally out of the blue, an unexpected trio held a press conference. Chef Ricardo Larrivée and triathlete Pierre Lavoie, both darlings of Quebec media, had joined forces with well-known architect Pierre Thibault. They were determined to prove that if you provided children with joyous, dynamic learning spaces, if you encouraged them to be physically active, and if you engaged them in learning to prepare healthy meals, you just might have a tremendous impact on their future—and on the future of our societies. As Ricardo put it, the trio hoped to create conditions that “would make children eager to go to school.”

The threesome had managed to convince Sébastien Proulx, then Education Minister, to invest three million dollars for a two-year period (a mandate that was later renewed) in the setting up of what they called a Lab-École—a research centre for experimental, progressive schooling—closely connected with Laval University’s School of Architecture. Initial research for the project included visiting dozens of schools located across the province, but also in Denmark, Japan, and Finland, as well as meeting with teachers, school directors, and others to develop ideas and concrete solutions. Then, work started in earnest, exploring ideas through drawings and models, and developing guiding principles for the optimal spatial organization of elementary schools. These guidelines were published in manuals that would serve as a base for the Lab-École’s next steps.

The first real-life testing ground for Lab-École’s research took place in a Quebec City neighbourhood. Stadacona School was initially going to be renovated, but had to be demolished. ABCP architecture and architect Jérôme Lapierre, the latter a close collaborator with Pierre Thibault, were selected to design a replacement building, which incorporated some of the ideas being developed by the Lab-École group. 

But the bigger effort was yet to come. Five other elementary school locations were then selected across Quebec, and each of them became the object of a major open architectural competition. As this article goes to press, four of the resulting new and renovated schools are now open; the fifth one, located in Gatineau across the river from Ottawa, is still under construction.

Simultaneous design competitions, all with anonymous entries, were launched in 2019 to choose the professional teams that would eventually design and build the five projects, within the Lab-École’s guidelines. The conditions were far from perfect: no remuneration was offered for Phase 1; the schedule was extremely tight; and the requirements were demanding, the competitors having to produce two perspectives, a site plan, plans of all floors, a significant section, as well as a model. Nevertheless, the Lab-École received a total of 160 entries for the five sites. Quite a few well-established firms were among the participants. This was a surprise, since such firms tend to shy away from anonymous, unpaid competitions. This high level of participation was probably due to the fact that, for decades, most of the province’s schools had been kept in the hands of a very select group of firms. For established firms which had never managed to build a school, entering one of the five competitions was a way to get a foot in the door. And of course, for younger, emerging teams, it was a chance to break through the system. 

This is exactly what happened at École des Cerisiers in Maskinongé, a small municipality of 2,250 people. Here, the smallest (2,770 m2) of the five Lab-École schools was awarded to a consortium headed up by two young women—architects Lucie Paquet and Paulette Taillefer. The duo was initially selected among four teams asked to develop their concept during a second phase: at this point they teamed up with Leclerc architectes, an established firm with a long record of school building, to eventually win the project.

École du Zénith (4,350 m2) and École de l’Étincelle (3,577 m2) went respectively to Pelletier de Fontenay (again with Leclerc architectes) and to a consortium of two up-and-coming firms, Agence spatiale and Appareil architecture (with BGLA architecture). Finally, École du Boisé-des-Prés, the largest (6,365 m2) of the school projects, was won by a consortium of two well-established firms, Lapointe Magne et associés and L’Oeuf. 

The vision proposed by the Lab-École researchers was summed up by architect Pierre Thibault in a Radio-Canada interview aired in August 2020: generous interior spaces, sloped roofs, the widespread use of wood, bleachers for various activities, and community gardens outside. 

The projects completed so far are all interesting in their own right, although there is a slightly uneasy similarity between two of them, École du Zénith (four kindergarten and 12 elementary classes) and École de l’Étincelle (three kindergarten and 12 elementary classes).
In both cases, the solution was to break the school down into small, interconnected pavilions, grouped around a partially enclosed exterior court. Sloping roofs and wood façades create a home-like feeling, highly evocative of Quebec tradition. At École de l’Étincelle—a project that was recently awarded a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture—the school also seems to offer a clear nod to the area’s iconic “Little White House.” Within walking distance of the new school, the small building is a strong symbol of resilience for the community, having survived the destructive floods of the summer 1996.  

At École des Cerisiers, the site included an existing school, which had to be integrated into the project. The architects’ response was subtle, as they managed to cleverly navigate between the 1950s structure and the contemporary intervention. The project raised a lot of enthusiasm in the municipality, which invested extra funds for its realization. As at several of the other sites, the school’s ground floor was planned so that the gym and the kitchen area could be made directly accessible to the public outside of regular school hours.

For École du Boisé-des-Prés, the architects delivered a much larger, complex project under an imposing roof structure. The program provided for eight kindergarten classes and 17 elementary classes. The building is characterized by its large aluminum-clad volumes and the strong presence of a community-accessible gym to one side of the public entrance. The sloping site also made it possible to locate the school kitchen so that it can be reached directly from outside, or by using the interior stairs. The school’s pièce-de-résistance is its central agora, with its generous bleachers that project to the exterior. One of the lead designers, architect Katarina Cernacek, acknowledged that the Patkaus’ early school projects had been a source of inspiration.

Conclusion

Studying the whole Lab-École operation, one cannot ignore the serious budget overruns—which, to be fair, were in large part due to Covid-related difficulties such as the increased cost of materials and labour shortages. Looking back at the work accomplished and at the results, Lab-École co-founders prefer to talk about “investment” rather than “expense.” They might be right. 

Curiously, a rather similar school building program had been initiated in British Columbia during the 80s and 90s. Thanks to the efforts of Vancouver-based Marie-Odile Marceau, then regional architect for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, a series of award-winning, well-published schools were built across the province for several First Nations communities. The use of wood, welcoming interiors, natural light, proximity to nature—it was all there! It took decades, but finally, the message has made its way across the continent.

This time, the Lab-École experiment may have a lasting effect in Quebec education. Even though the Province may not launch another school competition for a while, expressions such as “child creativity,” “natural light,” and “collaborative spaces” have now found their way into official Guidelines for primary school design in Quebec. That, in itself, is a huge victory. And the unexpected trio—Ricardo Larrivée, Pierre Lavoie and architect Pierre Thibault—should be thanked for it.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

École du Zénith, un Lab-École

LOCATION Shefford, Quebec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire Val-Des-Cerfs | ARCHITECTS Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes | ARCHITECT TEAM Thomas Gauvin-Brodeur (Leclerc Architectes), Hubert Pelletier (PdF), Etienne Coutu Sarrazin (PdF), Ghislain Gauthier (Leclerc Architectes) | STRUCTURAL Latéral (Thibaut Lefort and Alexandra Andronescu) | MECHANICAL BPA (Marco Freitas) | ELECTRICAL BPA (Jean-Claude Corbeil) | CIVIL Gravitaire |  LANDSCAPE Fauteux et associés in collaboration with agence Relief Design (Jean-François Bertrand) | INTERIORS Pelletier de Fontenay | CONTRACTOR Binet Construction (Charles-Antoine Busque) | AREA 4,350 m2 | BUDGET $30.5 M | COMPLETION January 2024

École Des Cerisiers, un Lab-École

LOCATION Maskinongé, Québec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire du Chemin-du-Roy | ARCHITECTS Lucie Paquet – Paulette Taillefer + Leclerc architectes | ARCHITECT TEAM Paulette Taillefer, Lucie Paquet, Thomas Gauvin Brodeur, Elaine Tat, Leslie Bellessa, Ibtissame Zandar, Hugues Patry, Étienne Pelletier, Alexandre Chartré-Bouchard | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Stantec | LANDSCAPE Mousse Architecture de paysage | INTERIORS Lucie Paquet – Paulette Taillefer | CONTRACTOR Therrien | BUILDING ENVELOPE Envelop3 | AREA 2,770 M2 | BUDGET $16.8 M | COMPLETION November 2023

École du Boisé-des-Prés, un Lab-École 

LOCATION Rimouski, Quebec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire des Phares | ARCHITECTS Lapointe Magne et associés + L’OEUF architectes in consortium | ARCHITECT TEAM Katarina Cernacek, Sudhir Suri, Jennifer Benis, Pascale-Lise Collin, Martin-F. Daigle, Alain Desforges, Aurélia Crémoux, Agata Najgebauer, Océane Purnham, Aline Gabriel-Chouinard, Benjamin Rankin, Ronnie Araya, René Chevalier, Chantal Auger, Caroline Corbex, Daniel Pearl | STRUCTURAL Latéral Conseil | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Gbi Experts-Conseils Inc.| LANDSCAPE Pratte Paysage | CIVIL Vinci Consultants | INTERIORS Lapointe Magne et associés + L’OEUF architectes | CONTRACTOR Construction Technipro BSL | ARCHITECT COLLABORATOR FOR SITE SUPERVISION Proulx Savard Architectes | AREA 6,365 m2 | BUDGET $35 M | COMPLETION June 2024

École de l’Étincelle, un Lab-École

LOCATION Saguenay, Quebec | CLIENT centre de services Scolaire des Rives du Saguenay | ARCHITECTS Consortium Agence Spatiale – APPAREIL Architecture – BGLA Architecture | ARCHITECT TEAM Stéphan Gilbert (BGLA), Kim Pariseau (APPAREIL Architecture), Étienne Bernier (Agence Spatiale), Lydia Lavoie (BGLA), Marc-Olivier Champagne-Thomas (APPAREIL Architecture), Johanie Boivin (previously with Agence Spatiale), Jérôme Duval (Agence Spatiale), Pascal Drolet (BGLA) | ENGINEERS LGT (now WSP) | LANDSCAPE Collectif Escargo + Rousseau Lefebvre | ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY Martin Roy & Associés | MEP Pro-Sag Mechanique Inc | ARTIST Mathieu Valade | AREA 3,577 m2 | BUDGET $16.75 M | COMPLETION September 2023

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PROJECT Promenade Samuel-De Champlain, Phase 3, Quebec City, Quebec

ARCHITECT Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker

TEXT Odile Hénault

In 2008, as Quebec City celebrated its 400th anniversary, its citizens received a major birthday present from the provincial government: a stunning 2.5-kilometre park along the St. Lawrence River. It was Phase 1 of Promenade Samuel-De Champlain (see CA, November 2008), named after the French explorer who founded the city in 1608. Designed by Montreal-based Daoust Lestage (now Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker) in collaboration with Williams Asselin Ackaoui and Option aménagement, the project was met with great enthusiasm as people flocked to it at all times of the day and in all seasons. 

Extending the Promenade

Fifteen years later, in 2023, a second stretch of this waterfront park has opened to the city’s residents. (A short connecting path west of the initial phase was completed in 2016, so the current project is technically the Promenade’s Phase 3.) Thankfully, the consortium led by Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker was once again commissioned to design this recent leg of the project. This meant continuity: in terms of philosophy, attitude to design, and architectural language. As in the 2008 project, wood was the signature material used for the Promenade’s pavilions, large and small, and for the urban furniture provided throughout. 

During the first phase, the architects had faced a number of challenges related to reclaiming the site from its previous industrial uses. To reconnect Quebec City’s residents to the river, they created a linear park, with a pedestrian path, bicycle trails, and access to the shore. The design was punctuated by thematic pier-shaped poetic gardens, evocative of the St. Lawrence’s tidal waters, windy storms, misty days, and the centuries-long presence of humans on the river. Phase 1’s focal point was the Quai des Cageux, a reference to the courageous raftsmen who floated logs down the St. Lawrence towards the coves of Sillery, the final destination for enormous quantities of timber bound for England.

Two decades later, preparations for the Promenade’s recent extension were equally—if not more—challenging. Significant infrastructural changes were needed to open up the site, including the relocation of the road—a process initiated in Phase 1—and its transformation into an urban boulevard with integrated parking. On another front, negotiations with CN authorities led to the shifting of a freight rail corridor closer to the nearby cliff. Thanks to these two major changes, some 37 acres of land were unlocked for recreational use. 

A design shaped by history

As the concept for the new 2.5-kilometre addition to the Promenade was being developed, it became obvious that history would play a significant role in the design. Remnants of former wharves were still present, severely damaged from decades of neglect. One of these was Frontenac Pier, a favourite spot for Sunday strollers in the first half of the 20th century. Then there was Foulon Beach, once a major summer attraction: traces of it were still visible along the shore, but, more importantly, memories of it endured in older citizens’ minds. Finally, a few hundred metres east from the beach, an existing marina was to be upgraded and incorporated into the new park. These three locations became the focal points of a triad of distinct sectors, each of which is served by a new pavilion: the Pavillon de la Côte, at the western end, the Pavillon des Baigneurs, serving the beach area, and the Pavillon de la Voile, next to the marina. 

The surrounding park was designed to reflect current ecological concerns. Major efforts were made to preserve and revitalize existing ecosystems, including ecologically sensitive marshlands. This led to the planting of over 1,000 trees and 29,000 shrubs, as well as the widespread re-introduction of plant species such as lyme grass, native to the St. Lawrence shores. Much appreciated by the public are three giant “pebbles,” placed along a sinuous path, which provide perfect observation posts for enjoying the new landscape and watching ships passing close by.  

The Promenade’s brightest jewel is its central sector, where the historic sand beach was resuscitated in the form of an infinity pool, cleverly inserted in the St. Lawrence River. There is an obvious reference to the seaside basin (1966) designed by a young Álvaro Siza Vieira in his native Matosinhos, Portugal. Of course, six decades—and the Atlantic Ocean—separate the two. The Portuguese pool is inserted among the rocky shores of a wild Atlantic—a stark contrast to the park setting of the Promenade’s pool, and the relatively tame shores of the St. Lawrence—which in part explains Siza’s use of robust monolithic concrete walls.

The Pavillon des Baigneurs expresses strength in its own way. The two-storey volume is much more elaborate than the smaller wood pavilions that Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker has placed elsewhere along the Promenade. The added level of complexity relates to the pavilion’s program, but also to the site’s topography, since the building acts as a transition point between the new urban boulevard and the shore, four metres below. A break in the pavilion’s stark granite walls marks the entrance to an upper-level restaurant, with an outdoor terrace facing the river. It also opens to an exterior stair leading towards the beach. 

At the bottom, a sandy expanse is capped by the pool, whose infinity edges create the illusion of its being part of the St. Lawrence. It’s a source of absolute delight, particularly for those of us who were children in the fifties, and who still remember the original beach. Younger generations—and new residents—are just as thrilled to discover this unusual bathing spot, more akin to a riverine beach than to a typical sports facility.

In actuality, the pool, 1.2 metres at its deepest point, is totally contained within concrete walls that, even at high tide, prevent the St. Lawrence waters from flowing into it. Adjacent to the pool is a shallow basin—just a few centimetres deep—where intermittent water jets are an attraction for young children or those just wanting to wet their feet. 

Faced with pool safety requirements and wanting to avoid the ubiquitous chain-link fence, the architects went on a worldwide search for a barrier that could disappear when the pool was open. They found what they were looking for in Poland, where they sourced retractable post fences that they were able to adapt to the needs of the project. The elegant solution matches the pool area’s bespoke lifeguards’ chairs and echoes the minimalism of the portals used throughout the Promenade to help break down its scale.

A new phase, an old conclusion

In 2008, I concluded my first article on the Promenade Samuel-De Champlain with the following words: “The project truly shows what can be accomplished when enlightened professionals manage to convince politicians to move towards the completion of a visionary concept. […] One can only hope this project will be a source of inspiration for professionals and politicians around the country as waterfronts and former industrial areas are being adapted to the 21st century’s new realities.” 

Unfortunately, the inspired vision that has led to the success of the Promenade Samuel-De Champlain continues to be rare. This April, the Crown Corporation which oversees Montreal’s Old Port announced that, for “financial reasons,” its 2017 project to revitalize the area would not be implemented as designed. The project, also by Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, is a refined proposition that would have gone a long way to mend the unfortunate, piecemeal approach adopted in the Old Port since the destruction of Silo no. 2 in 1978. 

The same firm also authored an admirable proposition for the National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan. Last fall, the project was declared the jury-selected winning entry of an architectural competition held by the federal government, only for the decision to be overturned by the same administration in favour of an approach focused on more literal imagery.

What is obvious from these two recent events is that the message is not getting through to politicians. Fortunately, professionals continue to champion quality architecture at the urban scale: the Promenade Samuel-De Champlain was the recipient of the Ordre des Architectes du Québec’s Grand Prix d’excellence, the highest honour in its awards program. It is a well-deserved recognition of the value of contemporary, urbane architecture as practiced by Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

CLIENT Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec (CCNQ) | ARCHITECT TEAM Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker—Réal Lestage, Eric Lizotte, Caroline Beaulieu, Lucie Bibeau, Grégory Taillon, David Gilbert, Mélissa Simard, Luca Fortin, Maria Benech | CONSORTIUM  – LANDSCAPE Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, Option aménagement et Williams Asselin Ackaoui | PARTNER Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable  | ENGINEERING AtkinsRéalis, WSP, Tetra Tech | PROCESS ENGINEERING François Ménard | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER Pomerleau | CONTRACTORS Construction BML (Station de la Côte, station de la Voile and Boulevard); Construction Deric); Station de la plage, mirror of water and the swimming area); Construction Citadelle (Pavillon de la Côte and Pavillon de la Voile); Bauvais & Verret (Pavillon des Baigneurs) | AREA 150,000 m2 (Promenade) + 1,200 m2 (Buildings) | BUDGET $135 M | COMPLETION July 2023

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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PROJECT Le 1500 rue Métivier

ARCHITECT Anne Carrier architecture

TEXT Odile Hénault

PHOTOS Stéphane Groleau

The city of Lévis, population 150,000, sits at the juncture of two worlds: rural Quebec and the province’s capital city. Formed from an amalgamation of several small towns and villages initiated in 1989, the 444-square-kilometre territory is composed of 48 percent farmlands, and still revolves around the world of agriculture. This, along with the city’s location a 10-minute ferry ride away from Quebec’s seat of power, may explain why Exceldor, a 400-member poultry farmers’ cooperative, chose Lévis for its new headquarters. 

The long journey from a group of little-known farmers’ cooperatives to a strong presence on the market started in 2013, when Exceldor hired well-respected advertising agency Cossette to rethink—and revamp—the brand’s visual identity. In 2020, a collaboration with lg2—another exceptionally gifted agency—led to an energetic communication strategy involving a new website and unique promotional campaigns. These days, Exceldor’s abstracted rooster logo has become a familiar presence in the province’s supermarkets.

Selecting an architectural firm able to match the sophistication of the brand’s strategy was the next challenge, which coincided with the desire to bring the cooperative’s employees into a single location. Just as Exceldor’s carefully considered branding is a far cry from the average city dweller’s perception of the rural world, the Cooperative set their sights on a design and location that would go beyond stereotypes. The chosen site was within a new development centred on Lévis’ Convention Centre, inaugurated in 2008. The district, called MISCÉO, has quickly expanded in the past fifteen years to include several mid-rise condominium complexes, a major hotel, a university building, and several low-rise commercial structures.

The four-storey structure at 1500 Métivier Street was purpose-built for Exceldor, which occupies the upper two levels. Two restaurants, a gym and several small businesses are on the ground floor, while forestry management agency Solifor occupies the second level. For locally minded developer AMT, the choice of Lévis’ Anne Carrier Architecture was an obvious one. The firm had amply proved its worth with the design of La Caisse Desjardins de Lévis’ headquarters. That project, which also involved ABCP Architecture, received a 2016 Governor General’s Award in Architecture. 

As the design team searched the surroundings for sources of inspiration, the site offered few cues. Finally, they picked up on a tiny shift in the street grid. This innocuous prompt evolved into a major organizing element as the plans developed, particularly the third and fourth levels to be occupied by Exceldor. Vertical movement was also introduced: floors appear to be sliding above one another, breaking the scale and “making a visual connection with the nearby one-level structures,” according to the architects. 

Another strategy, often used by Anne Carrier architecture, is the deployment of large metallic frames, which project from the buildings’ façades and bring them to life. The presence of Exceldor’s senior leadership is thus emphasized, as their fourth-floor offices reach forward from the northwest façade. From inside, the CEO and Board members enjoy a framed view of Lévis’ historic centre and Old Quebec City beyond. 

At the other end of the building, a three-storey-high frame was introduced, breaking the monotony of the glass cladding. Similar thinking led to the insertion of dark spandrel glass panels on the two longer façades, which introduce visual rhythm while allowing for the flexible placement of internal partitions. 

The interiors, also designed by Anne Carrier Architecture, were meant to encourage personal exchanges—of crucial importance in a post-pandemic context. Here and there, glass partitions interrupt the otherwise open work areas, maximizing natural light for all users. The third-floor reception desk is integrated into a central core, where washrooms, storage areas, and other services are concealed from view. The oak-veneer panels lining the core bring a feeling of warmth and well-being to both floors; wood is also widely used in the employees’ cafeteria to similar effect. 

The two Exceldor floors are linked by a voluptuous perforated metal spiral staircase, acting as a pivot between employees and management. Thin concrete slabs allow for higher ceilings and a clear articulation of the volumes. The exposed concrete also set the tone for this project’s sober colour scheme, light-years away from rural stereotypes. 

Although well-designed workplaces may not be unusual in larger, more prestigious businesses, achieving this quality of design in a mid-scale commercial building, for a client group usually associated with rural settings, remains a rare feat. Despite its relatively small size, and in its own subdued way, Exceldor’s headquarters is a powerful reminder of how architecture can engage in place-making. While commercial architecture is rarely recognized in awards, this is the kind of work that can be inspirational to architects—and their clients—showing how even the most ordinary of programs and locations can be elevated through design.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

CLIENT Groupe Commercial AMT & Exceldor inc. | ARCHITECT TEAM Anne Carrier, Robert Boily, Martin L’Hébreux, Patricia Pronovost, Guy-David Paradis | STRUCTURAL Genie+ | MECHANICAL CBTEC | CONTRACTOR Ogesco construction | AREA 4715 m2 | BUDGET $10 M | COMPLETION October 2022 

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Winner of a 2023 RAIC Advocate for Architecture Award

Founded in 2006 by architect Martin Houle, Kollectif is a Québec-based entity that is a key resource for the province’s architectural community. The organization is currently run by Houle, along with journalist Marc-André Carignan and architect Grégory Taillon. Of note, Kollectif has always been—and still is—a part-time initiative, as all three have full-time jobs.

The core of Kollectif is as an online news platform, which gathers and distributes information on lectures, exhibition openings, award nominations, job openings, notable projects, and other news of interest to the province’s design community. To date, its website includes some 10,845 news items, with an average of 15 curated items posted each week over more than 15 years. In 2019, the platform was added to to Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ)’s list of key cultural heritage resources, affirming the value of the information it consolidates. Kollectif’s weekly newsletter and social media posts are seen as essential reading not only for architects, but also for those in allied design fields. Its articles have forged links between practising designers, researchers, academics, students, and an architecture-interested public.

As Kollectif’s profile has grown, it has also organized thematic roundtables, led open letters, and taken on its own content creation projects. With long-time video collaborators CC Lab, the online series Bienvenue Chez… visits the homes of architects in Québec, and the series Suivez le guide!, produced with the City of Québec, helps to raise public awareness of the built heritage in different Québec City neighbourhoods.

In 2021, Kollectif launched a two-phase campaign called #Quiestlarchitecte, underscoring the importance of naming architects and designers when discussing built work in the media. The public is invited to tag posts with #Quiestlarchitecte, #Quiestledesigner, #WhoIsTheArchitect, and #WhoIsTheDesigner when articles fail to identify the creators of buildings and other projects. On the surface, this simple gesture promotes design culture and encourages proper crediting. However, the long-term goal of this initiative is also to provide a tool to the architectural community to help ensure the accountability of professionals for their work. The campaign’s launch included a photo series of architects alongside recent public projects. The tag #Quiestlarchitecte has since also been adopted and promoted, with Kollectif’s permission, by Belgium’s national architectural association.

Kollectif has furthered its commitment to the architectural community as a lead organizer of an annual charitable golf tournament for Québec architects. Kollectif’s founding director, Martin Houle, has become the face of this event, which to date has raised over a quarter of a million dollars for academic institutions, cultural organizations and humanitarian organizations such as Architects Without Borders Québec.

Martin Houle was made an honorary member of the Association des architectes en pratique privée du Québec (AAPPQ) in 2015, and Kollectif’s cross-platform head of content, Marc-André Carignan, received the Association des architectes paysagistes du Québec’s Frederick-Todd Prize for landscape architecture advocacy in 2021.

Jury Comments: This outward-focused organization was conceived to spotlight, advocate for, promote, and raise the profile of architects both to the public and to one another. Through their various campaigns, they have played a unique role in the promotion of architectural practice across Québec, making it accessible to the public while connecting practices to each other. Kollectif’s commitment to EDI is demonstrated in their inclusion of a diversity of individuals and practices in their spotlights, while their generosity towards other educational, cultural, and humanitarian organizations, such as Architectes sans Frontières, was also noted by the jury. 

Kollectif’s promotion and support of the local architecture community has become a vital resource that connects designers in conversation and empowers them with new ideas that promote innovation and elevate the quality of work within the profession. Their easy-to-consume and well-curated information, made accessible across different platforms, has effectively engaged Québec’s broader community, elevating awareness and appreciation for design in a way that should be seen as a model for the entire country. 

The jury for this award included Brent Bellamy, Charles-Mathieu Brunelle, Michael Green, Jenn McArthur, Shallyn Murray, and Betsy Williamson. 

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PROJECT Maison de Lauberivière, Quebec City, Quebec

ARCHITECT Lafond Côté Architectes

TEXT Olivier Vallerand

PHOTOS Charles O’Hara, unless otherwise noted

When talking about Lafond Côté’s design for Lauberivière, a large shelter for unhoused people in downtown Quebec City, founder Anne Côté notes that visible homelessness seems like a recent fact in the provincial capital. Her observation points to changing patterns of homelessness, but also to evolving understandings of how to support unhoused people—including rethinking how architects can be involved. 

As the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s 2019 documentary What It Takes to Make a Home discusses, in recent years architects such as Michael Maltzan have explored designs that move away from trying to blend shelters into their surroundings. Instead, they are looking to formally express the importance of providing well-designed spaces for people transitioning back into traditional housing. In that spirit, the new Lauberivière towers over an elevated highway accessing Quebec City’s historic and legislative cores, unapologetically claiming space in the city for marginalized people.

Lafond Côté was involved in an earlier project to renovate Lauberivière’s original space. The new building, which followed from that work, was designed over a decade. During that time, Côté and her team volunteered in all of the organization’s different services to fully understand the needs of both the people it served, and the volunteers and employees who help them. To rationalize internal operations, the site’s topography was used to create independent access to each service, from a new 24-hour sobering centre opening to the lower street, to transitional housing apartments at the top, with a day centre, food services, legal and financial services, and night shelter rooms in between. This allows clients to directly reach the area most relevant to their current needs—while avoiding interaction with people they may feel they share little with at the present point in their lives. Stacked vertically, the services also shape the elevations, with window sizes expanding towards the top of the building.

The building envelope also reflects financial, technical, and environmental innovations developed by the client, the not-for-profit housing resource group that advised it, and the architects. To limit long-time maintenance costs, the team decided to aim for a high-performance, energy-efficient building. As part of this effort, they developed a new type of aluminum-cladding system, with research funded by an Alu-Québec/Société d’habitation du Québec grant that also helped subsidize construction costs. The new panels are inspired by the traditional tôle à la canadienne construction technique, in which small metal roofing shingles are interlocked to resist heat expansion and contraction. Compared to the traditional material, the new panels, intended for walls, are larger and thinner, reducing structural loads and installation time. 

The material innovations continued with the choice of an economical alloy, rarely used for anodized aluminum because of its unreliable colour. However, for Lafond Côté, that diversity of shades was appropriate to this project, as it offers subtle visual texture and conceptually reflects the diversity of users. Metal screens adorned with silhouettes of human figures further add to the composition of the façades, while lending shade and privacy to the common rooms.

Inside the building, the team focused on providing dignity and safety for the clients, volunteers, and employees. Instead of large dorms, quieter individual single-night rooms ring the middle floors, surrounding a core of community rooms and services. In collaboration with the client, the architects designed a door handle that safely keeps doors open at night to facilitate interventions, and shuts them during the day, indicating when rooms are ready to be cleaned. The rooms have angled windowsills to prevent guests from climbing outside, and are designed using temperature-resistant materials to facilitate heat treatment when bed bugs are detected. 

Another major improvement from the previous location is the light-filled dining room served by a full commercial kitchen. The latter is equipped with biomethanization systems that recover energy from food waste. Volunteers who help prepare the 350 meals served each day—including some who previously used Lauberivière’s services—now enjoy a daylit space with views to the outside.

Last November, Côté and Élodie Simard, who coordinated the energy performance aspects of the project, presented Lauberivière at Architecture sans frontières Québec (ASFQ)’s first symposium on homelessness and architecture. Building on initiatives like Jill Pable’s Design Resources for Homelessness website, the symposium was organized to launch a new catalogue of promising design strategies compiled by ASFQ, in which Lauberivière features as an example of a building where intimacy gradients are used to help clients feel at home. 

In its publication, the ASFQ is careful to underline that talking about “good practices” around homelessness can be misleading, as it implies that tested solutions can be applied everywhere. Instead, as Lauberivière—and Lafond Côté’s larger portfolio of community projects—highlights, to be successful, such spaces must aim for co-design processes that recognize the diversity of unhoused people and the necessity of unique solutions adapted to their needs.

Olivier Vallerand is an Assistant Professor at l’École de design, Université de Montréal.

CLIENT La Maison Lauberivière | Technical Resource group Action-Habitation de Québec | ARCHITECT TEAM Preliminary Studies—Mario Lafond, Anne Côté; Conception—Élodie Simard, Francis Fortin; Execution—Élodie Simard, Francis Fortin | STRUCTURAL Cime | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Génécor, Poly-Énergie | LANDSCAPE Duo Design | INTERIORS Lafond Côté architectes | CONTRACTOR Construction Richard Arsenault| Energy Efficiency Écohabitation | AREA 10,551 m2 | BUDGET $23.5 M | COMPLETION June 2021

Thermal ENERGY Demand INTENSITY (ACTUAL) 17 kWh/m2/year 

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PROJECT Montauk Sofa Montreal, Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECT Cohlmeyer Architecture

PHOTOS Nanne Springer

In the summer of 2021, Montauk Sofa discreetly inaugurated its new flagship showroom on Montreal’s well-known St. Laurent Boulevard. The three-storey structure is barely noticeable among the heterogenous mix of buildings, which line what was once The Main for successive waves of European immigrants. Today, amid grocery stores, restaurants, bars, and businesses of all kinds, Montauk Sofa’s disconcertingly quiet presence conveys a timeless message, refreshingly at odds with its surroundings.

Five years in the making, the 1,200-square-metre showroom is the result of an intense collaborative effort between Montauk Sofa co-founders Tim Zyto and Danny Chartier, Cohlmeyer Architecture, and HETA landscape architect Myke Hodgins. The flagship replaces the company’s first store, opened in 1995 further up St. Laurent Boulevard. Like Montauk’s later showrooms in New York, Chicago, Vancouver and Calgary, several of which were designed with Cohlmeyer Architecture, the present commission involved the transformation of an aging structure, with the architects taking the lead in carefully uncovering an industrial backdrop and accenting it with understated contemporary interventions.

The Montreal showroom is in the heart of the Plateau-Mont-Royal, known for its narrow streets, lined with century-old, low-scale buildings. The charm of this lively, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhood, which has become one of the most popular areas in the city, comes at a high price for architects and designers called in to upgrade existing properties. The procedure to obtain a building permit—even for as basic a request as replacing a window— can last for months. Needless to say, it was a real challenge to get permission to tear down part of a building, insert a garden between the retained façade and the building’s remaining portion—the latter reclad with a minimalist glass wall—and to lower the basement, including consolidating the foundations on poor quality clay subsoils. 

Complying with fire code requirements was another major issue for Cohlmeyer Architecture and their engineers. The solution found—concealing fire curtains in the ceilings—was key to the whole project. The result is four gallery-like areas, open to natural light from front to back, displaying comfortable sofas placed among plants and beautiful objects. As architect Daniel Cohlmeyer notes, “It would have been atrocious to put an enclosed exit stairwell in this space and ruin the showroom’s effect of total openness.” Adds owner Tim Zyto, “In this particular building, we have a lot of space. We like to use it, not to cram a lot of furniture in, but rather to let it breathe.”

Architecturally speaking, there is no grand gesture here, but something perhaps more rare: an amazing ability to see a building’s hidden potential and to come up with inventive ways of revealing it. This vision was not about adding, but about subtracting, removing, stripping. The interiors, still showing traces of the past, were left bare. Mechanical, structural, and electrical components were concealed in sculptural, sawtooth-like ceilings—designed by Daniel’s father, firm founder Stephen Cohlmeyer, before his untimely passing in 2021. 

Special attention was given to the basement, a low, dingy space that required extensive work before it could be turned into a fourth showroom floor. Once it was excavated—and less spectacular technical problems, such as redirecting and properly insulating water and sewage lines, were solved—natural light was brought in using a 10-foot-wide exterior lightwell running along the front façade. In the centre of the composition, a storey-tall waterfall cascades from the ground-floor garden to the lower courtyard. Creating a magical effect was paramount for Zyto, who recalls initially wanting the waterfall to be the width of the entire façade. “For our client, vision is more important than budget,” says Daniel Cohlmeyer. “It is very rare.” 

While trendy, of-the-moment architecture is frequently celebrated, anonymous, nondescript buildings often reflect the soul of our cities and neighbourhoods. Montauk Sofa’s revamped new home embraces a sense of quietness, retaining the spirit of the original place. The various landscape, architecture and design awards lavished on this project are a remind­er that sometimes, simplicity is the best answer. And at a time when biodiversity is becoming ever more important, small, improbable gardens may point the way to the future.

Montauk Sofa may be heralding a new era for St. Laurent Boulevard. Slated to be built a few doors south of the showroom, the new Montreal Holocaust Museum, as designed by KPMB and Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, also takes a sober, yet entirely contemporary, approach. Hopefully, Montauk Sofa and the future museum, each in its own way, will set new standards for St. Laurent Boulevard—as well as for other Montreal locations that have much to learn from these two exemplary projects.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

CLIENT Montauk Sofa | ARCHITECT TEAM Daniel Cohlmeyer (RAIC), Matthew Vanderberg, Emmanuelle Guérin, Czesia Bulowska, Stephanie Shaw, Stephen Cohlmeyer (FRAIC) | STRUCTURAL NCK Inc. | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Ambioner | CIVIL | LANDSCAPE HETA | INTERIORS Cohlmeyer Architecture | CONTRACTOR Rampa Construction Co. | ACOUSTICS MJM Acoustical Consultants Inc. | AREA 1,672 m2 (INCLUDING FRONT COURTYARD) | BUDGET $3.2 M | COMPLETION January 2021

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The infrastructure required to process water—both as it enters our cities and homes, and returns to our lakes and streams—is vital to our everyday lives, and often taken for granted. Buildings that elevate this infrastructure underscore the importance of water, and the right to clean water for all. Through architecture, these often invisible systems enter the public eye, and begin to solidify the place of waterworks in our collective consciousness.

Stormwater Facility by gh3*

Toronto, Ontario

TEXT Elsa Lam

The most recent project by Toronto-based architecture and landscape firm gh3* is actually one of its first. Architect Pat Hanson and her team were awarded the contract to design a stormwater facility on Toronto’s waterfront in 2009—just three years after their firm was established. The initial design, for a stone-clad building half the size of the present facility, came in over the budget at the time, and was subsequently put on hold.

Since that time, the development of the east waterfront area has progressed by leaps and bounds. A larger facility was required, to not only handle stormwater runoff from the Canary District as per the original remit, but also from the developing East Bayfront and part of the Portlands.

After an initial filtration that removes debris, urban runoff from these areas travels to a 20-metre-diameter, 90-metre-deep shaft at the west end of the site, marked at ground level by a supersized radial grate. From here, it’s siphoned into the main treatment plant—a path visualized by surface paving patterns—then cleansed for a return trip into a separate outer ring in the shaft. The purified water is deposited into the nearby Keating Channel.

The treatment plant itself houses two floors of equipment—flocculation tanks, fine sand filters, UV purification—all wrapped in a sculptural form. “It’s conceived as a series of manipulations of a simple volume, to show the shedding of the water,” says architect Pat Hanson. She adds that the involvement of Waterfront’s Design Review Panel pushed the design to become even more “expressive in showing the passage of the water.” This resulted in an integrated gutter that traces the path of rainwater from the roof, down the walls, and into a drain along the building’s perimeter. The canted roof is further accentuated by a triangular skylight and an array of chevron snow guards.

Because the industrial nature of the facility created latitude for experimentation, the construction is the inverse of a typical wall section: the exterior is a 400-mm-thick cast-in-place concrete wall, with insulation and a rainscreen concrete block wall on the inside. In the past year since its opening, the exposed concrete has taken on some hairline cracks, which Hanson says are to be expected, and don’t affect the concrete’s strength. Over time, she expects that it will continue to acquire patina, with the once-pristine surface picking up urban pollution and the gutters darkened by water stains. “Once it gets dirtied up, it’s fine,” says Hanson. “It falls into line with the Gardiner [Expressway] and railway tracks, it fits in.”

The facility is currently surrounded with chain-link fences and hemmed in by adjacent construction sites. But in a few years, it will develop a public presence. The urban plans for the area include re-routing Lakeshore Boulevard to run directly in front of the site, bringing cyclists, pedestrians, and car traffic alongside a large window that invites views of the machinery inside. A new plinth, planned for the south side of the building, will create a public plaza centered on the sculptural landmark, looking over the road towards Lake Ontario.

CLIENT Waterfront Toronto and Toronto Water | ARCHITECT TEAM Pat Hanson, Raymond Chow, Elise Shelley, Richard Freeman | PRIME CONSULTANT RV Anderson | STRUCTURAL / MECHANICAL / ELECTRICAL RV Anderson | LANDSCAPE gh3* | INTERIORS gh3* | CONTRACTOR Graham Construction | WASTE WATER WSP | SOILS & ENVIRONMENTAL GHD | AREA 600 m2 (building); 6460 m2 (site) | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION May 2021

Galt Water Intake by Smith Vigeant architectes

Montreal, Quebec

LOCATION Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECt Smith Vigeant Architectes

tEXT Odile Hénault

PHOTOS David Boyer

A recently unveiled building, which punctuates Montreal’s eight-kilometre-long Promenade de l’Aqueduc, is intriguing. It stands out as an unusual object in a park, particularly striking on foggy days and at night, when it turns into a giant lantern. Officially a water intake station, this project is a far cry from the industrial, corrugated metal-clad buildings that usually house municipal infrastructures. Its striking presence was celebrated by the Ordre des architectes du Québec in its 2022 Awards of Excellence.

The 35-metre-long, 12.5-metre-wide, 9-metre-high box is set on a park-like promenade much appreciated by the neighbourhood’s residents, who kept a close watch over the project from the moment the City of Montreal’s Drinking Water Division made its intentions public. Smith Vigeant architectes, who were selected from a shortlist of three firms, fully understood what was at stake in terms of public acceptance. And they started dreaming. “We wanted to create a significant gesture that would go beyond the building’s function,” says architect Daniel Smith. “We were looking for a visual signature that would enliven the public space, while reminding passersby what a precious resource water is.”

The building plays an essential role in Montréal’s drinking water system, acting as a first clean-up station for raw water drawn from the St. Lawrence River. Four screening devices operate 24 hours a day, catching algae, branches, and other debris carried by the river. The only manual operation performed in the fully automated water intake facility is cleaning the screens on a regular basis. Once the water has gone through this primary process, it is channeled towards an underground conduit that leads to the Atwater Water Treatment Plant, 900 metres away. Ultimately, water treated in this plant will reach 40% of Montreal homes.

The program stressed the need for a highly secure and energy-efficient facility, which resulted in heavily insulated walls and a green roof. The planted roof not only addressed energy issues, but also was seen as one way of compensating for the loss of park space on the ground, a concern strongly voiced by the Borough of Verdun’s residents. Another major factor that impacted the shape and height of the building was the close proximity of high voltage power lines on the site.

The concept chosen by the architects appeared in their very first sketches, where they played with stripes of colour meant to represent the ever-changing nature of water. The green roof was present from the start, as was a dark mineral base, today made of concrete bricks in three tones of anthracite grey. The initial poetic intention remained paramount for both the client and the architect. “The building’s appearance and its impact on its immediate surroundings were top priorities,” says Daniel Smith.

The four façades in the windowless structure were clad with 30-centimetre-wide horizontal aluminium bands, painted in seven distinct shades, from almost white, to turquoise, to dark blue. Roughly 60 centimetres in front of this first layer is a second skin, made of vertical translucent glass panels. The superimposition creates a subtle shimmering effect and, rather unexpectedly, gives the façades a pixelated appearance.

One of the most evocative spaces of this intake station is the narrow corridor running between the façades’ glass and metal skins. Inaccessible to the public—as is the rest of the building—this service corridor will somehow remain as a fleeting presence, only to be seen by technical staff.

In its own modest way, this small intake station is linked to a remarkable tradition of architecturally significant infrastructural works. It may not be as eloquent as the grand Italianate Atwater Water Treatment Plant (1918) or as Toronto’s Art Deco R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant (1941), which inspired Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion. But Montreal’s new water intake facility does emphasize the importance of investing in public architecture, however humble its function.

Quebeckers, who seem to live under a collective delusion that water is an unlimited resource, are among Canada’s highest users—and wasters—of domestic water. Hopefully, this rather unique project will help raise awareness of the essential role water plays in our lives and of the importance of using it wisely. Let us also hope the leadership shown here by the City of Montreal will have an impact on future infrastructure projects across Quebec and the rest of the country.

Architectural writer Odile Hénault is a regular contributor to Canadian Architect. 

CLIENT City of Montreal drinking water division in collaboration with the borough of verdun | ARCHITECT TEAM Daniel Smith (MRAIC), Anik Malderis, Mariana Segui, Jennifer Dykes, Stéphan Vigeant, Sabrina Charbonneau | STRUCTURAL / MECHANICAL / ELECTRICAL Hatch | CONTRACTORS Procova and CRT | AREA 381 m2 | BUDGET $3M | COMPLETION June 2021

Clayton Water Reservoir by Local Practice

Hazelgrove Park, Surrey, British Columbia

TEXT Courtney Healey

Water is life. Throughout human history, people have built systems that capture and convey this life-sustaining force allowing communities to grow and flourish. Today, while inter-jurisdictional uncertainties continue to complicate the provision of safe drinking water on First Nations reserve lands across Canada, bringing clean water to new municipal settlements like East Clayton in Surrey, BC, is a complex but achievable endeavour. Turning that infrastructure into poetry is next level.

The need for the Clayton reservoir dates back to 1996, when Surrey City Council identified East Clayton as a suitable area for new development. But it was only over the past decade that dense new subdivisions started rolling out across this former agricultural area and the shared unceded traditional territory of the Katzie, Semiahmoo, and Kwantlen Nations, who have been its stewards since time immemorial.

Designed by Local Practice, a Vancouver-based firm co-founded by Michel Labrie and Matthew Woodruff, the Clayton Reservoir earned a 2019 Canadian Architect award. Since its completion in 2020, it has largely fulfilled the design team’s goal: “to create an object of integrity without attention seeking,” in Woodruff’s words. He says that infrastructure like this is “foundational for a stable society‚“ and “should make visible the necessary work of living with dynamic natural systems.” Indeed, the water that feeds the reservoir is in constant motion, flowing from mountaintops through a vast downstream system of dams, water mains, and pump stations managed by Metro Vancouver, the body responsible for regional water service. Clayton is one of over 20 storage reservoirs near the end-point of the system, which fill up overnight to meet peak early morning demand. The increased storage capacity at Clayton will help the community weather increasingly warm and dry summers.

Woodruff’s involvement with the Clayton reservoir started in 2010, with a feasibility study that located the structure at the north end of a new park. This early decision was key to the project’s success, creating a strong edge to the green space, and making room for sport fields and other outdoor amenities. The reservoir will eventually double in size to meet demand as the neighbourhood is fully built-out, and Local Practice’s design accommodates this expansion through a mirroring of the plan to the north.

Design decisions are few, but effective at bringing down the perceived scale and mass of the reservoir. Rounded corners ease the eye around the edges, while a strong horizontal datum humanizes the height. Two patterns of undulating precast cladding modulate the surface, with a light gray billowing convex surface above, and a dark gray concave scalloped surface below.

Beyond its essential work, the Clayton Reservoir serves as a quiet backdrop to Hazelgrove Park. On sunny days, it acts like a movie screen, its surface alive with shifting sunlight, clouds and the shadows of waving trees. It’s a calming architectural presence, with a materiality that offers subtle visual cues to the important work going on behind the facade. Investing in infrastructure and making it visible is a noble goal. It would be wonderful to celebrate the delivery of clean water through beautiful infrastructure like this to all communities across Canada.

Courtney Healey is an architect and writer living and working on the unceded traditional territories of the xwməθkwə’yəm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwəta?l (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

CLIENT Metro Vancouver | ARCHITECT TEAM Evelyne Bouchard, Geoff Cox, Heidi Nesbitt, Justin Power, Maddi Slaney, Mallory Stuckel, Matthew Woodruff (MRAIC), Melanie Wilson | ENGINEERING LEAD AND PRIME CONSULTANT Associated Engineering (B.C.) Ltd. | CONTRACTOR Westpro / Pomerleau | LANDSCAPE space2place | GEOTECHNICAL Golder & Associates | AREA 3,500 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION Fall 2020

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Kollectif. a free weekly newsletter dedicated to sharing industry news from the AED professions in the province of Quebec, is marking its 15th anniversary.

The newsletter was started by architect Martin Houle in July 2006, who continues to act as a quasi-volunteer in running the newsletter. He has since been joined by architectural journalist Marc-André Carignan and architect Grégory Taillon, who became collaborators in the Kollectif team in 2014 and 2019, respectively.

The newsletter disseminates industry announcements including information on events, exhibitions, competitions and projects in Quebec. It also maintains a job board and a directory of the 100 firms in Quebec whose work it follows. The newsletter has been archived with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BanQ) since 2019.

Among Houle’s proudest accomplishments are Kollectif’s Architects Annual Golf Tournament, which brings together some 400 architects and has raised over a quarter of a million dollars for events, humanitarian and cultural associations, university programs and museums dedicated to architecture.

While Kollectif was originally intended to disseminate existing content, Carignan brought original content to it, by merging his blog with the platform and producing original photography and videos for it. Of particular note, Carignan spearheaded two architecture video series: “Bienvenue chez…” and “Suivez le guide…” focused on tours of architects’ houses and urban neighbourhoods. The City of Québec is supporting the launch of a second season of Suivez le Guide in 2022.

In the past two years, Kollectif also spearheaded a #quiestlarchitecte #whoisthearchitect photo and social media campaign to identify the authors of buildings. The program, now finishing its second season, has gained the support of the Ordre des architectes du Québec. The architectural association of Belgium has created its own version of the program, and France’s architectural association is looking to launch a similar program in 2022.

Houle started Kollectif while working as an architect at Montreal firm Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux, and later at ACDF. He currently works at structural engineering firm ELEMA, where he facilitates structural coordination four days a week, running Kollectif on Fridays. The platform has run continuously for 15 years, pausing only when Houle was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012. From 2012 to 2014, he had to stop his full-time job to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments, but largely continued with Kollectif.

“I’ve given 15 years of my life amidst life’s highs and lows to create and maintain a platform that’s, to my knowledge, unique in Canada,” writes Houle. “If an architect such as myself can juggle two very different careers, I hope that some of Kollectif’s initiatives can help and inspire other architects to invest themselves in their own communities, even with a full-time job.”

He adds, “With questions regarding climate change, transportation, city developments, urban sprawl, social housing, etc., I strongly believe that architects can act as credible beacons in society. But they have to be heard, they have to be seen. Not only in architecture magazines, or websites. On local news, national media, on the radio or TV: in other words, where citizens can see them. They can (should) get involved in politics: in fact, in the last municipal elections in Québec, two women architects were voted for mayorship.”

Houle cites the work of Marie-Josée Lacroix, Montreal’s first Commissioner for Design, as inspiration for his work at Kollectif. “Without Marie-Josée, Kollectif wouldn’t have kickstarted as it has. Without Marc-André, Kollectif wouldn’t be where it is today,” he says.

Kollectif has documented 15 highlights from its 15 years in a post that can be viewed here.

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ARCHITECTS Lemay / Atelier 21

PHOTOS Stéphane Groleau

Since its grand opening on January 16, 1971, the Grand Théâtre de Québec has been a prized cultural icon in Quebec City. The building is admired for its brutalist architecture, by Victor Prus, who designed it as a solid box made of prefabricated concrete panels, with a projecting roofline, sides subtly canted inwards, and transparent base. The architecture is entwined with an integrated artwork—a monumental concrete mural by sculptor Jordi Bonet that covers close to 60 percent of the interior, making it one of the largest sculptures of its kind in the world.

By the turn of the century, moisture had caused the concrete panels’ steel anchors to disintegrate, threatening both the exterior envelope as well as the interior mural, both of which are linked to the structure. The concrete anchors could not be simply removed and replaced. An innovative solution was urgently needed to protect the building’s heritage elements.

To halt the corrosion of the anchors, Lemay and Atelier 21 worked to create a transparent exterior envelope that would fully encapsulate the building—a North American first. The box adapts to the building’s unusual shape, adopting its structural logic and composition in order to quietly surround the original architecture.

Because of the heritage building’s fragility, designing and constructing the envelope was a complex endeavour. The project had to stay open throughout the process: construction noise could not interrupt shows or rehearsals, architectural and technical solutions could not hinder building access, and interior spaces were off-limits. Since the interior mural was connected to the exterior concrete panels, any operation had to have zero impact and vibration on the existing envelope. Coordination with several levels of decision-makers was essential. Weather conditions were also a major challenge: installation of the new envelope was only possible under specific climatic conditions, when it was sufficiently warm and without strong winds. Finally, because the new glass panels needed to be precisely attached to a steel armature, the steel could not be exposed to any significant temperature variation from the moment of its final assembly to the installation of the glass.

The construction systems were almost all custom designed. The delicate steel structure on which the glass rests is the result of intense and sustained teamwork among architects, engineers, construction specialists and manufacturers. The custom fabricated fasteners have a minimal visual impact, with only a small 200 mm x 200 mm aluminum square visible, maintaining the transparency of the new protective layer. The construction system also had to allow for maintenance, which is achieved with a suspended platform inserted in the two-metre void between the existing building and the new envelope.

The construction uses 900 ultra-clear laminated glass panels, each of which weighs a half tonne. They are supported by four fasteners at their corners, composed of two exterior plaques that cinch against the glass, and an intermediate stainless steel component that connects to the new steel structure and allows the panel’s alignment to be adjusted. Positional accuracy within two millimetres was achieved through techniques used for the first time in North America. For instance, two-tonne sand trays were suspended at the bottom of the structure to simulate the weight of the glass plates before they were affixed, allowing for workers to ensure the structure was precisely positioned before attaching the glass. Each time a panel was installed, ballast was removed to maintain the final position of the whole structure.

The secondary, tempered air layer created by the new envelope allows for a low-flow heat recovery system, increasing the building’s energy efficiency. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and energy simulations were undertaken to ensure that the air temperature within the construction void could be maintained at a minimum of five degrees Celsius. The structural elements required additional tests, including testing of the joints between the glass panels, which led to the development of a bespoke silicone joint base.

As we face more challenges related to the preservation of modern heritage, the refurbishment of the Grand Théâtre de Québec provides a set of technical solutions that may be applicable to other projects. Moreover, it models a transdisciplinary approach, in which architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, architectural historians, manufacturers, and other specialists work together to push boundaries and find cost-effective, low-impact tactics. The result is a simple, efficient solution that responds to the particular technical needs and aesthetic expression of Victor Prus and Jordi Bonet’s theatre. The building’s striking brutalist lines and artistic narrative are not only preserved, but are ultimately enhanced by this subtle, functional and environmentally advanced solution.

Jury Comments ::  The Grand Théâtre de Québec demonstrates a host of notable innovations in the spirit of honouring the original Victor Prus building and sensitively protecting the existing degrading structure and Jordi Bonet mural. The new glass casing is quiet and understated, with a technical rigour that speaks to what must have been remarkable teamwork between the architects, engineers, and manufacturers. It skillfully addresses the challenges faced by the concrete façades and unique interior sculptural murals by developing from the exterior a meticulous envelope system and creating an in-between controlled environment. The team’s choices throughout the process demonstrate how intelligent, quiet innovations can significantly extend the life of public buildings for the betterment of the community, climate and environment.

The jurors for this award were Pat Hanson (FRAIC), Michael Green (FRAIC) and Leila Farah.

CLIENT Grand Théâtre de Québec | ARCHITECT TEAM Lemay—Eric Pelletier, Gabriel Tessier, Sarah Perron Desrochers, Amélie Turgeon, Olivier Boilard. Atelier 21—Christian Bernard, Mathieu Turgeon, Antoine Carrier, Jacques Berrigan, André Dagenais, Élie D. Carrier, Marc Leblond. | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL WSP (Olivier Marquis) | GLASS/FIXTURE DESIGN ELEMA consultants (Félix Bédard) | MATERIALS SIMCO | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL WSP (Jean Gariépy) | CONTRACTOR Pomerleau (Sébastien Couillard) | STEEL STRUCTURE Métal-Presto (Claude Roseberry) | GLASS MANUFACTURER Viterie Laberge (Jean-François Berthiaume) | LIGHTING Lemay / Atelier 21 + Guy Simard architecte | LANDSCAPE Lemay / Atelier 21

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If God is said to be in the details, then Ménard Dworkind Architecture & Design has lavished their concept for a cabin retreat with blessings. On first glance, Hinterhouse—a modernist, nature-adjacent answer to Airbnb—may look like a simple rectangular box, and it is. But zoom in and you’ll discover details, treatments and storage solutions that are far from standard. They might even have the weekend renter wishing they could move in.

The cedar-clad Hinterhouse was conceived for a young tech entrepreneur who wanted a country house for himself. He’d been looking at prefabs from a Quebec company, but when he realized the level of interior customization was limited, he turned to Montreal-based Ménard Dworkind to design a home. He wanted it to be prefabricated, so that he could use one as his personal cabin, and sell others to the public. When the pandemic hit, the client instead saw an opportunity in renting his 100-square-metre cabin to nature-starved city folk. (He’s since invested in the design and construction of a second cabin, with plans to continue adding to the series of one-of-a-kind rental retreats.)

Because the design phase of Hinterhouse was a bit like getting all dressed up with no place to go—there was a brief for a two-bedroom cabin, but no building site—David Dworkind, the lead on the project, set out focusing on the things he and his team could control. “All we knew was the house would be set in nature,” Dworkind says, adding they inserted ample glazing on both sides of the rectangle to maximize the connection to the great outdoors, no matter the location. Beyond that, they concentrated on details and materiality.

On the exterior, channel siding in cedar adds texture and, over time, patina to an otherwise simple structure. The offset pattern is repeated on sliding screens that can be pulled in front of the windows for privacy and light control (a stand-alone sauna got the same exterior TLC). But it’s on the interior, where the cedar is swapped for oiled pine, that the creative solutions flourish, from double-duty furnishings in the kitchen to hidden storage spaces.

“There’s way more storage than you’d need for a weekend getaway, but originally, the client was going to live in the house,” Dworkind says. To keep the design minimalistic, the team concentrated services in a black plywood cube in the centre of the otherwise blond-wood rectangle. The cube conceals electrical and other mechanical parts, but also closets and drawers in the bedrooms, and cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. Another intelligent solution for the kitchen is the hybrid island. With the insertion over the sink of a cutting board in the same material as the coun­tertop, it becomes
a dining table, eliminating the need for a separate table. This hybrid island comes to life not only at dinner parties—thanks to a built-in herb garden, it’s sprouting life of its own.

Even if the cabin originated out of place, it’s become part of its verdant surroundings in the Laurentians, north of Montreal. Looking out at the valley from the miniature garden in the kitchen island, the life inside connects with the life outdoors. You sense the cabin itself is an island—a sanctuary—for urbanites escaping the city and the pandemic. Access to a slice of paradise, more than ever, counts as a blessing.

Susan Nerberg is a writer and editor based in Montreal.

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“Show me a wealthy architect,” architect Lloyd Hunt once quipped to his class at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, “and I’ll show you a developer.”

The profits of developers can seemingly outstrip an architect’s fees on a project. But for architects, there’s a way to reap the financial rewards of development—by becoming the developer.

The rewards go beyond potential financial gains, though. Architects who enter the development arena are often aiming to make modest, but important improvements to a neighbourhood or city that they know well. They’re gaining valuable knowledge about building from a client-and-owner perspective that feeds back into their architectural practice.

When architects own, finance, and sometimes even act as the builder for development projects of their own design, caution is needed to navigate potential conflicts of interest. As with some other professions, architects are ethically bound to maintain a high level of independence and impartiality in supporting the interests of clients and of the public.

A conflict of interest can arise when an architect has other roles in a project. For instance, when an architect has a financial interest or acts as the builder on a project, it can be difficult to be impartial in tasks such as certifying the value of work, explains the Ontario Association of Architects in its Practice Tip 26.

The Tip states that business activities outside of providing architectural services should not be connected to the architect’s Certificate of Practice. “The OAA does not discourage members from pursuing other avenues of business, such as the provision of construction services, under a separate entity,” it reads.

The Alberta Association of Architects expects that members choosing to be involved in activities such as development conduct their business through a separately registered legal entity. It also expects members to communicate and market their architecture design services independently from other industry-related activities. For the AAA, the onus lies with members to clearly identify and distinguish in which capacity they are operating if they provide a combination of regulated and unregulated services.

Some of the architects I spoke with for this story set up a separate corporation that owns the property under development, and that hires the architect to work on it. All of them emphasized the importance of fully disclosing their role to all parties involved, and ensuring that their professional responsibilities supersede their financial interests.

The Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s Bylaw 31.5 states that an architect may be a project’s owner, and may also be a project’s contractor. The bylaw adds that in these cases, written disclosures of the architect’s additional roles should be provided to contracting parties, as well as to authorities having jurisdiction over the project’s review and approval process. Written acknowledgments that those disclosures have been received and accepted are also required.

In Ontario and Quebec, if architects own greater than a 10 percent share of a project, they forfeit their professional liability insurance for that project.

Pro-Demnity, the provider of mandatory professional liability insurance for Ontario’s architects, notes that conflicts of interest can provide an enduring risk with regards to future claims, which may come from other parties involved in the project, the users of the building, and people who may be affected by the project, such as adjacent landowners and passers-by.

“Pro-Demnity’s experience arising from claims where an architect attempts to wear two hats at the same time through two separate incorporated entities, is that the architect potentially undermines the strength of their own legal defense as professionals,” comments the insurer. “The prudent way forward is for the architect to make informed decisions about the type of risks they choose to accept, keeping the professional liability insurance limitations in mind, and appreciating that playing only one role or the other is the best way to eliminate the conflict of interest risk altogether.”

In California, where architects can obtain insurance as an owner, architect and builder, architect Jonathan Segal has built a thriving practice around development work. Segal has developed and designed 30 projects over as many years, holding most of the properties as rental apartments which his small firm also manages.

The rentals create the income needed to fund new projects and pay for employees. Since the apartments depreciate over time, they also present a tax advantage that can be used to offset gains from annual rental income.

Segal, who offers an online course in his method, says that being the developer helps him to expedite work by eliminating the disputes and finger-pointing that typically arise between architects, owners and builders in conventional practice. “I’m making the drawings and writing the cheques,” he says. “I want to get financing, get the building done, collect rental income, and then move on to the next project.”

Since he continues to own the properties, this allows him to push the envelope of what he would do for clients. For instance, in one project he put in a glass floor that later leaked—it wasn’t a problem, in his view, as he simply repaired it. “These buildings are all one-offs, so they’re all going to have problems—we can fix that stuff,” says Segal.

He advises architects interested in development to start by building their own house and flipping it, gaining experience in dealing directly with trades, financing, and real estate transactions. This can be repeated to gain capital and momentum, with the goal of moving up to progressively larger projects.

Segal notes that the appreciation of projects over time is where he’s seen the greatest profit in his work. “Always do rentals, never condos,” he says, noting that he has only rarely sold buildings from his portfolio, when he was offered twice what he considered to be their worth.

It’s recommended for architects pursuing development work—along with any work outside the scope of architectural practice—to obtain appropriate legal and insurance advice in their province or territory to suit the contractual relationships involved.

Is it worthwhile to navigate the regulatory issues and financial risks to pursue this kind of practice? We spoke to a half dozen architects who’ve taken the leap, and haven’t looked back.

Shora Parvaresh, Noble Architecture

Vancouver, British Columbia

With their high real estate prices, cities like Vancouver and Toronto are tough places to get started with development projects. But while the financial risks are high, architect Shora Parvaresh felt a strong pull to pursue her own developments as a way of nudging up the city’s standards for housing quality.

“My theory is that quality really matters—and if you’re not in a position to get an architect to design your dream home, there’s not many options that have a lot of sparkle and joy in them,” says Parvaresh. “Is it possible to push the boundaries a little, and make something affordable, high-quality, well-designed, and with an element of delight?”

Three years ago, Parvaresh founded Noble Architecture amid pursuing a Masters degree in management, all while continuing her full-time job. (She says that her current employer, MA+HG, has been supportive of this work, and she sees principals Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko as her mentors.) Parvaresh recently completed and resold her first project under Noble—a duplex replacing a single-family home.

While most Vancouver duplexes divide houses into square-shaped front and back units, Parvaresh instead wanted to explore a side-by-side typology that would give both homes a front entrance and allow equal use of the backyard. To offset the narrower plans, more akin to Vancouver townhouses, her units include a double-height void that creates a sense of openness throughout the floorplates.

In construction, she prioritized high quality materials, including raw natural wood shingles that will develop a silvery sheen over time, and a metal roof chosen for its longevity and ease of maintenance.

In Vancouver, most spec homes maximize the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and add so-called luxury finishes like faux-marble tiles. “Those things are not on the top of my list, but high-quality spaces are,” says Parvaresh. “There’s things that sell in the city that become the norm, but they’re not necessarily making our lives better.”

An unexpected challenge that Parvaresh encountered in the development process was securing a commercial mortgage for the project, even though on paper, she met all the requirements. From her Masters’ research, she learned that women typically had more difficulty accessing financing than men—and this resonated with her experience. “It could be that it was my first project, or that I was trying a newish idea,” she says, reflecting that it’s impossible to know why her applications were rejected by several banks. Eventually, she was able to get approved for financing, but it wasn’t easy.

Parvaresh is hoping to ramp up to larger-scale development projects, although she is being careful to find the right investment partner to work with. Her ideal: a partner that shares her philosophy of contributing positively to the city, and producing a bottom line that doesn’t stop at profit alone.

“The reason to do this is not because I am dying to take financial risks or that I am that entrepreneurial by nature,” says Parvaresh. “But because it is the right and necessary thing to encourage market change and better housing outcomes across the city and the country. My dream is to lift up the public expectation of developments.”

“We all know that a duplex in East Vancouver is not going to solve affordability and density issues in this city,” she says. “But it is a very small step towards the right direction. Two families on one lot is a tiny bit closer to a healthier, more appropriate density.”

Gene Dub, Dub Architects

Edmonton, Alberta

When Gene Dub was establishing himself as an architect in the 1970s, he got in the habit of renovating the houses he lived in and reselling them. “My father was handy and my mother was industrious,” he recalls. “The first six houses, they did all the legwork with me.”

He also started fixing up spaces occupied by his office, Dub Architects—it moved four times in its first few years, each time leaving behind a newly renovated building, and accruing a bit more money to fund the next project. The firm continued to take on development projects, owned by sister company Five Oaks. Dub had a development project going at all times, to act as a levelling device for the firm’s workflow.

That’s still the case—Five Oaks projects make up between 10 to 30 percent of Dub Architects’ work in any given year. But over time, those projects have gotten progressively larger in scale. Five Oaks has completed 20 major projects, and its current work is its most ambitious, including a $70-million residential project with 400 terraced units in the historic Rossdale brewery and on an adjacent four-acre parcel, and the redevelopment of the 1968 Charles Camsell Hospital into a mixed-use project with 600 residential units.

Dub’s passion for self-initiated development work stems from both an entrepreneurial drive and a love of history. Fourteen of the projects he’s completed under Five Oaks, representing some $120-million of work, are historic renovations—the kind of project that conventional developers wouldn’t take on because they were too risky. This includes restoring Edmonton’s historic registry A-listed McLeod Building—a Chicago-style neoclassical office building replete with terracotta ornament.

In 1984, the turn-of-the-century Alberta Hotel was demolished to make room for a new federal office building. Thirty years later, Dub recovered its carved sandstone-and-brick façades, cupola, cornice and bar mirrors—and rebuilt the front part of the building, with a contemporary rear, 50 feet away from its original site. “The façade and hotel bar now exist as they did when Prime Minister Laurier came to declare Alberta a province, and apparently stayed at the hotel,” says Dub.

In holding with an ethos that repurposing older structures is much more sustainable than demolishing then, Dub has also renovated several modern-era buildings, including converting Saskatoon’s 1960 Hudson’s Bay department store into condos.

The success of Five Oaks has come from seeing long-term value in heritage buildings—and, more generally, in Edmonton’s real estate. This has put Dub in a position where he can give back to his community in significant ways. In 2018, he donated a $3-million, newly renovated apartment building to a group providing housing to homeless, pregnant women in Edmonton. The City Market Lofts reuses a market building from the 1960s, creating affordable housing for artists, and providing high-quality spaces that elevate the transitional neighbourhood, rather than contributing to its stigma. A new 10-storey office building, where Dub Architects currently resides atop a fashion-and-beauty college, sports one of the country’s largest vertical solar arrays.

Dub is philosophical about rolling with the gains and losses that come with this type of work. Early on, he converted a fire station from the 1950s as a new office for Dub Architects. Just as they finished it, someone offered him much more money to use the site for a new-build. “So we sold it, and they tore it down.” He expects his current conversion of the 23,225-square-metre Charles Camsell Hospital to lose money—it has been a complicated project, with a significant amount of asbestos abatement. But many interesting stories have emerged in the decade since the project began: it’s come to light that an earlier hospital on the same site was where Indigenous people were treated for tuberculosis in the 1950s, and often separated from their families in the process. “It’s been a financial disaster,” says Dub, “but it’s a significant Canadian history story, for good or bad. Movies have been made about this place—it’s a really interesting building.”

Tom Knezic, Solares Architecture

Toronto, Ontario

Sustainability is at the top of the agenda for Solares Architecture, a Toronto firm co-founded by architects Tom Knezic and Christine Lolley. It’s also the driving force behind a series of development projects they’ve undertaken in the west end of Toronto.

A soft start to this aspect of their practice was setting up their office on the ground floor of a Dufferin Street fixer-upper, with their own apartment above it and a rental unit below. Later, they gut-renovated a house in Roncesvalles for their growing family, making it a showpiece for the space-efficient, environmentally conscious design that they bring to their clients, and including a rental unit in the basement.

Eco Flats #1—their first project developed fully as an investment property—was an effort to bring the same principles of considerate design and energy efficiency to the Toronto rental housing market. After leveraging their existing properties to purchase a local single-family row house, they gut-renovated the dwelling, converting it into three passive-house inspired apartments. The work included underpinning the basement, giving it a separate entrance and full-sized windows to make it more airy and light than typical basement units.

A three-unit renovation dubbed Eco Flats #2, completed last year, built on the lessons learned from the first. “The impulse of architects is to always take things to the next level of difficulty, but here, we had the discipline to do almost exactly the same project as before—but to do it better,” says Knezic.

A big part of both projects was cutting the gas line—since natural gas is a potent contributor to carbon emissions—and going all-electric. Because the dwellings achieve a passive-house level of airtightness, they use very little energy. In Eco Flats #1, the first electricity bills came in at $30 per person. Eco Flats #2 takes 88% less energy to heat and cool than pre-renovation, and achieves a 96% reduction in carbon emissions.

The projects also allowed Solares to test-drive advanced building technologies, such as grey-water reuse systems, air source heat pumps, and electric heat pump hot water tanks. In the second project, Knezic specified Quebec-made Minotair compact air treatment units for each apartment—ERVs that also heat and cool the air, and are small enough to fit inside tenant closets overtop the laundry machines. In all, “these mechanical units weren’t much more expensive than conventional systems,” says Knezic. Moreover, he adds, they freed up the space normally occupied by a basement mechanical room. “That gave us an extra bedroom—so the decision paid for itself almost immediately.”

To reduce the use of high-carbon plastics and foams, Knezic experimented with using parging and plaster on the interior walls of Eco Flats #2 as a partial substitute for standard air barriers. To achieve a tight envelope without an extra layer of spray foam, he specified Aerobarrier—a substance similar to Elmer’s glue, that’s pumped as an aerosol into a pressurized home to fill cracks in the envelope.

For Eco Flats #2, Knezic optimized the sequencing of the trades to complete the project in under a year—a feat for a gut-renovation—minimizing the amount of time that the building was unoccupied by renters. “It shows that it’s not a choice between environment, speed, and cost,” says Knezic. “This was done in 10 months, and it makes money month over month.”

“There’s a mission to all of this,” he adds. “It’s a way to show people that we’re not kidding about this work. When we design houses for clients, we’re always saying that we should go a little further—we should go all-electric, we should insulate more. I can really advocate for these things because I’ve done it for myself.”

Bill Curran, Thier + Curran Architects

Hamilton, Ontario

Purchasing and designing one’s own office space is one starting point for architects to act as developers. That was the case for Bill Curran, whose firm occupies the top floor of a converted 19th-century furniture store in downtown Hamilton. Curran purchased the brick-and-timber loft building with two non-architect friends a decade ago. In addition to Thier + Curran’s offices, it now includes a half-dozen commercial and office spaces, with tenants such as the CBC, a café, and a beauty salon and supply store.

Curran has since developed two additional Hamilton properties: a Prohibition-era liquor warehouse that he adaptively reused as three loft-style townhouses, and a pair of joined main-street buildings in Hamilton’s Barton Village, with commercial units at street level and residences above.

Curran developed the townhouses on his own, while the Barton Village project, like his office building, was completed with others. The decision to find investment partners depends on the project, says Curran. “A bigger project demands more money, especially if it’s an older building in a sketchy neighbourhood,” he says, noting that banks will not finance vacant land, and don’t like empty or derelict buildings as investment properties. A loan is only available for the value of what’s already built on the site. “I’m looking for a gem in the rough—where you can see that the bones are fantastic, but to the untrained eye, it looks very, very unappealing. And the untrained eye includes the appraiser from the bank. So you have to work with them, to convince and educate them.”

By working with buildings on the fringes, Curran’s work contributes to Hamilton’s revitalization. “Our office was one of the first buildings to be redeveloped as part of the renaissance on James Street North. Now our Barton Village building is also becoming a beacon in its community,” he says.

Curran has a vested interest in seeing his projects thrive, but as a proud Hamiltonian, he also carries a personal passion for each of them. The Barton building, for instance, once housed Gallery 435, known for its 35 years of Friday night art and music jam sessions—an event Curran loved. “We bought the Barton building selfishly,” he says, “to keep the Friday boozecan Openings going.”

“It’s gratifying to buy and improve real estate and for it to be catalytic,” says Curran. “As an architect, you have the ability to make that happen.”

Financially, several of Curran’s developments depend on the gap between commercial and residential real estate prices in Hamilton. “Derelict commercial buildings are cheaper than houses, and I like their inherent character and how they’re put together,” says Curran. With housing prices on the rise, his properties have gained substantially in worth when upgraded into residences.

Curran estimates that the buildings he’s been part of have more than doubled in value from what he and his partners put into them. “This is my retirement fund,” says Curran. “I’m far more comfortable investing in real estate than in stocks or derivatives.”

Jack Kobayashi, Kobayashi + Zedda

Whitehorse, Yukon

When Jack Kobayashi and Antonio Zedda set up their architecture firm in Whitehorse, most of their work was outside of the city. “Downtown Whitehorse was the domain of small-time developers doing mediocre buildings,” says Kobayashi. Many of these didn’t even involve an architect—a possibility since Yukon doesn’t have an Architects’ Act. “Anyone can do their own building—and they were.”

Like a musician who isn’t landing a record deal and decides to start an indie label, Kobayashi and Zedda decided to do downtown buildings on their own. Their first project, completed in 2001, was a multi-use condominium, with four residential units and a ground-floor dental office. They funded the project with help from family and resold it when completed. “It didn’t make us rich, but we liked doing it,” says Kobayashi.

Since then, they’ve completed a half-dozen more multi-use residential projects on their own, keeping a unit as their earnings each time. The most recent is an affordable rental apartment building that they will hold rather than sell off. “It’s a bit more challenging, as there’s no capital injection to pay down the whole building—we’ve got to carry the asset and live off the rental income,” says Kobayashi. “We’re at a certain level where we can do that—we could never have afforded to at the beginning.”

The projects are built by a sister company led by Kobayashi and Zedda, called 360 Design Build. “We run it off the side of our desk,” says Kobayashi, who says he spends 95 percent of his time on the main architecture practice, and the remainder running the design-build company. 360 has three full-time staff and also takes on some private projects—usually single-family houses designed by Kobayashi and Zedda. (To avoid stepping on the toes of local contractors, 360 doesn’t bid on any projects, either public or private.) “Building ourselves keeps us current,” says Kobayashi. “You’re seeing more of the spectrum of construction, and that informs your professional life.”

In addition to their new-build development projects, Kobayashi and Zedda also own Horwood’s Mall, where they’ve had their offices since 1995. The 4,100-square-metre building has sections that go back to the early 1900s, which is ancient by Yukon standards—“like Roman times,” says Kobayashi. Since purchasing the property eight years ago, they’ve been gradually restoring its heritage features and bringing up the design standard of its spaces, which house 40 tenants. Their vision is for Horwood’s Mall to become the town’s social and community hub, and they’re gratified to see it starting to attract local artists, start-ups, and other creative endeavours.

Kobayashi’s advice to architects thinking of taking on their own development projects? “Start with something small and keep building on that.” He adds, “As architects, we’re the perfect people to do this. We have the skill set, and then we hire ourselves out to other people who then have full control of the project.” Fundamentally, the only thing that separates developers from architects, he says, is their ability to take on risk. “The only thing holding us back is the risk factor. Find the confidence somewhere to do it; the door’s wide open after that.”

Aurèle Cardinal, Stéphanie Cardinal, and Ludovic Cardinal, Humà Design +Architecture

Montreal, Quebec

“When I was much younger,” says architect and planner Aurèle Cardinal, co-founder of Cardinal Hardy, “the developers didn’t want to build what we were drawing, because they thought we were dreaming too much.” So, he reasoned, “we’ll build the dreams, and then we’ll have more clients who believe in us.”

That impulse led Aurèle to lead a string of development projects in the Montreal region, first on his own, and more recently with his children—architect Stéphanie Cardinal and former banker Ludovic Cardinal. In all, they’ve built and sold some 1,350 units of housing, working on all aspects of the projects from purchasing the land, to finding outside investors, to managing construction and sales.

Aurèle’s first development projects in the 1980s were small-scale condominium buildings—a type uncommon at the time in Montreal, when most developers were focused on building three-storey walk-up rental apartments. The family has continued to innovate in bringing new typologies to the city. They’re currently completing the fourth phase of Espace MV, a multi-block development in Dorval that includes single-family homes, townhouses, and condo-and-loft buildings up to seven stories in height—all of which share co-owned amenity spaces.

Stéphanie and Ludovic hadn’t originally set out to join their father in development. Stéphanie trained as an architect and specialized in interiors, starting her own firm, Humà, in 2006. For university, Ludovic was accepted into architecture and commerce programs, and was encouraged by Aurèle to choose finance. He worked as a commercial banker for 20 years.

In 2010, Cardinal Hardy was sold to IBI Group, which in turn sold its Quebec offices to Lemay in 2015. Aurèle then joined Humà to expand its architectural offerings and ability to support real estate development work. (A sister company owned by the Cardinal family, Gestion PCA, is also involved with the family’s development portfolio.) Five years ago, Ludovic also joined Humà, bringing financial expertise that allowed for more substantial involvement with larger development projects.

The trio estimates that their own development projects constitute about a fifth of Humà’s work. The majority of Humà’s work is for outside clients, primarily real estate developers, for whom it acts as a one-stop shop. Its diversified in-house expertise allows Humà to take on the marketing, branding, interior design, architecture, and construction supervision of developments, as well as financial reporting to investors. “All of these people are under the same roof,” says Ludovic, “it’s a super nice unity when everyone is rolling in the same direction—it’s very satisfying.”

Being involved in all aspects of a project—both in their own development work and for outside clients—allows the team to bring a greater depth of reflection to their designs, says Stéphanie. This was especially evident in Espace MV, where early on, the team decided to retain and adaptively reuse an existing brick-and-beam factory structure—a choice that informed later design choices throughout the site. “The fact that we could work for 13 years within the same spirit is added value for the project,” she says. Moreover, “it’s also added value for the profession to see a project within this holistic view.”

One measure of success, for Aurèle, is that many of the first residents of Espace MV are still living there. “You have to bring good solutions for people to stay on the land for that long; you have to have satisfied clients,” he says.

Ludovic says that architects’ interest in development is often a case of the grass being greener on the other side. In his analysis, when all is said and done, development is not necessarily more lucrative than architecture—each party contributes its own expertise, and collects a concomitant level of return.

But the opportunity to work together as a family? That’s priceless. “Cross-generational work is not done enough,” says Stéphanie. “To be able to integrate 35 years of our father’s experience into our work—it’s amazing.”

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To mark its 15th anniversary, Quebec-based architecture news site Kollectif has launched a social media campaign under the hashtags #quiestlarchitecte and #WhoIsTheArchitect. The effort aims to underscore the importance of naming architects and designers when buildings are featured in the news and on social media.

Kollectif calls on the public to add the hashtags #WhoIsTheArchitect or #WhoIsTheDesigner in the comments section when they see an unattributed building online. “This simple gesture serves to reinforce a positive design culture and to encourage best practices in architecture,” write the organizers. “It’s also a mark of respect for the work of architects and designers, who have the same right to recognition as artists or photographers.”

To further their efforts, Kollectif collaborated with artist-photographer Eric Branover to create a series of images showing prominent public places in Quebec, along with their designers. The images are posted on Kollectif’s Facebook and Instagram pages, and we’ve rounded up a selection below.

Architect Manon Asselin (Atelier TAG) at the Bibliothèque Raymond-Lévesque, in Saint-Hubert, designed in collaboration with Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architects.

Architect Gilles Saucier (Saucier + Perrotte architectes) at the Stade de soccer de Montréal, designed in collaboration with HCMA.

Architect Marie-Eve de Chantal (LemayMichaud) inside Strøm spa nordique du Vieux-Québec.

Architect Daniel Smith (Smith Vigeant architectes) in front of the Centre de découverte et de services du Parc National des Iles-de-Boucherville.

Architect Didier Gillon (Gillon et Larouche)at the LaSalle Metro Station, designed with artists Michèle Tremblay-Gillon and Peter Gnass.

Architecte Maxime-Alexis Frappier (ACDF architecture) in front of the Centre d’art Diane-Dufresne, in Repentigny. The artwork “Crescend’eau” was created by Richard Langevin.

Kollectif acknowledges that each of the presented projects is the work of many people, including architects, intern architects, technicians, designers, clients, contractors, engineers, and others. “The goal isn’t to glorify a single person, but to represent the efforts of a multitude of people through an identifiable face, as a symbol of the collective work,” write the organizers.

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PROJECT Grand Marché de Québec, Quebec City, Quebec

ARCHITECTS Bisson associés + Atelier Pierre Thibault

TEXT Olivier Vallerand

PHOTOS Maxime Brouillet

Public markets conjure up ideas of community and exchange, of a dynamic urban life. Local governments have increasingly invested in creating new markets and supporting existing ones. Doing so builds on renewed interests in the benefits of eating local products, and strengthens the relationship between urban and rural communities.

In recent years, the Quebec City municipal council has transformed its foodscape through two significant steps. The first was building a permanent structure, designed by Fugère architecture with an original concept by CCM2 architectes, to replace the tents of the Sainte-Foy Public Market in the city’s southwest. The second was moving the Old Port Market from the tourist-oriented Vieux Québec to a new location close to the central city, at the junction of the Limoilou and Vanier neighbourhoods.

Bisson associés and Atelier Pierre Thibault, in joint venture, were tasked with the design for the Grand Marché, situated on the former agricultural fairground now known as ExpoCité. They were asked to transform the Pavillon du commerce (originally known as the Pavillon de l’industrie), a vast exhibition hall designed in 1923 by architect Adalbert Trudel and engineer Édouard Hamel. Following the decline of the fairs, the vast space—120 by 60 metres with 12-metre-high ceilings in the centre—had most recently been used as a go-kart course. Adaptively reusing the pavilion was a natural fit, providing an occasion to restore the heritage building, whose form echoed the traditional market halls found in European cities. The redevelopment of the ExpoCité grounds had already begun with the 2015 addition of the Centre Vidéotron stadium, and the renovation of other historic halls. The Grand Marché was envisaged as another anchor to boost activity on the site.

Design lead Pierre Thibault, project lead Jonathan Bisson, and their team developed a conceptual approach that builds on the elegance and lightness they perceived to be still present in the heritage structure, despite years of neglect. The building’s large scale and clerestory windows gave the impression of being outside, leading Thibault to imagine the market as a “roof floating above an open space,” with a main street and public square. Echoing the layout of a small town, the composition would make a direct reference to the rural areas from which many of the market’s products come.

The concept allows for much flexibility—an asset in a long process of developing the program with the producers’ cooperative, and an attribute which will likely contribute to the market’s longevity. The current layout groups the farmers’ simple stalls on the south side, next to large sliding doors. The side façade had once accommodated fair stands and doors that were shut at some point in the building’s history, and is now reactivated by the reopened entrance and farmers’ market. The central “main street” is lined with a series of one- and two-storey shops, and topped with new large skylights. Flanking the “public square,” oversized wooden steps lead up to the second level, which includes a restaurant and other food-related services. On the north side, a service alley subtly (and wisely) positions the loading docks, service spaces, and shared warehouses outside of the main circulation path. Like at a traditional market, smaller deliveries to the stalls can also occur from the south doors.

A concept built around distinct structures in an open space allowed the team to circumvent some of the structural and budgetary constraints linked to adapting the historic structure. For code and structural reasons, anything new needed to be an independent structure. A new foundation slab supports the autonomous new elements, with the existing building acting as an umbrella hovering overhead. The original mezzanine floor has been removed, and a series of large concrete buttresses now supports the eastern and western end walls—one of a very few major additions to the original structure.

Material choices further underscore the approach of creating pavilions in an open space. The wood used on many of the new surfaces contrasts with the heritage brick walls and steel structure. The existing steel is painted dark grey, and new steel painted white to express the structural transformations—a decision that is especially welcome in places where the structure is doubled. The second-level walkways are painted white; although in some areas, this gives them a visual presence that distracts from the wood retail volumes.

Early in his career, Thibault had worked on the predecessor market in the Old Port, which was designed to prioritize logistics, access and delivery. By contrast, the new Grand Marché is primarily envisioned as a destination—an attractive, stimulating space for people to rediscover local food. To this end, the market includes performance spaces and educational installations, such as an aquaponics system maintained by Laval University for both training and research. The building also includes an on-site composting system, helping to showcase the impact of human production and consumption.

New skylights bring in a good amount of overhead light, essential for the trees and vegetation that border the interior streets. Designed to reflect the diversity of the boreal region, these gardens also required particular attention to the colour temperature of the building’s artificial lighting.

Connections between indoors and outdoors continue on the west side, where a glass-enclosed lobby and restaurant terrace expand the market onto Place Jean-Béliveau, an esplanade completed in 2017. The open space fronts the Centre Vidéotron, and is animated by public art, performance spaces, and a children’s play area. Unfortunately, on the east side facing Limoilou and the old Colisée Pepsi, a large, bland parking lot is still present. Hopefully the eventual redevelopment of this side—following the recent addition of a bus terminal and planned demolition of the Colisée—will lead to a rethought parking area, with more plants, trees, and other structures that make the space friendlier to pedestrians.

Opening less than a year before the Covid pandemic hit, the Grand Marché has yet to take root as a fully alive market that rivals long-standing public markets elsewhere. The move from the Old Port was controversial, and the architects deliberately chose not to recreate the cramped aisles that had defined that space for three decades. However, the high quality of the architecture and the attention brought to reinstating the lost qualities of a heritage building are impressive. All this was achieved in spite of relatively low budgets and multiple programmatic changes.

Most importantly, many local producers have expressed their satisfaction with the building and with their renewed relationship with local communities. In the Grand Marché’s new location, the clientele extends beyond the tourists who frequented the Old Port Market. The Grand Marché promises to continue adding new vitality to a long-neglected part of Quebec City, reaching back to the original mission of the Pavillon de l’industrie—to celebrate local entrepreneurial spirit and agricultural know-how.

Olivier Vallerand is Assistant Professor at The Design School, Arizona State University.

CLIENT Ville de Québec (Caroline Lamonde) | ARCHITECT TEAM Bisson associés—Jonathan Bisson, Caroline Lajoie, Julie Dubé, Evans Zuniga, Jacques Dion, Frédérique Murphy, Marie-Michelle Gauthier, Matthias Coquereau, Geneviève Gagnon, Loïc Lefebvre, Katell Meuric. Atelier Pierre Thibault—Pierre Thibault, Jérôme Lapierre, Julie Poisson, Guillaume B. Riel, Luis Alejandro Rojas-Perez, Charlène Bourgeois, Mathieu Leclerc, Éric Boucher | STRUCTURAL EMS Ingénierie (Éric Boucher, Simon Clément) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL WSP Canada (Alain d’Anjou) | CONTRACTORS Construction Citadelle (Martin Girard) and Construction Richard Arsenault (Simon Proteau) | AREA 9,000 m2 | BUDGET $26.1 M | COMPLETION June 2019

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