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Montréal
– A City of Contrasts
Summary article of Committee
on Design Conference
19 to 22 September 2002
An additional
epithet for Montréal is that of a city of many contradictions.
The world’s second largest French speaking city is a predominately Latin
culture living in a nordic setting; however, even this is contradicted
by the existence of an English speaking minority that has shared in much
of the development of the city since the British conquest of la Nouvelle
France in 1760. Montréal has a European temperament that is
nonetheless resolutely located in the recent history of the vast North
American landscape.
Perhaps eclectic
is a better word to describe Montréal’s layers of architectural
and urban history dating back to before it was founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie.
Beginning with the French Catholic origins of Montréal, the city’s
façades are also composed of examples from Victorian era eclecticism,
optimistic 1920s Art-déco, clean post-WWII modernism, commercial
post-modernism, and now a contemporary design, characterized by ‘interventions’
in the urban landscape. These interventions are conscious of the
past, this place, and where we are at present.
Montréal
is an urban experience that is most understood by walking through the city’s
interwoven neighbourhoods. The AIA Committee on Design conference
was conceived to plant the members in the city between the river and the
mountain. Walking through the ‘underground city’ to Montréal’s
modernist ‘diva’, Place Ville-Marie (IM Pei, 1962), was the first contradiction
whereby the group left the streets to walk underground in order to arrive
at a panoramic cocktail on the top of the PVM tower.
The tour of the
rigorously detailed Canadian Centre for Architecture was followed by a
reception and dinner honouring Phyllis Lambert in the gritty Darling Foundry,
a multidisciplinary art centre in the middle of Montréal’s multimedia
city. The Foundry was at the centre of Montréal’s industrial
revolution and now the old surviving factories and warehouses of this precinct
have been converted into the trendy high-tech offices of the information
revolution.
Héritage
Montréal conducted two walking tours dedicated to placing the city’s
contemporary interventions within the historical layers of the city’s context.
In particular, the tour of the Quartier Latin was one of the thematic highlights
of the conference. It was later followed by a panel discussion of
five well-known Montréal architects at the Université de
Montréal. The Quartier Latin is a vibrant cultural neighbourhood
containing Québec’s newest university, l’Université du Québec
à Montréal. The Quartier Latin is also a project of
ongoing urban repair containing several contemporary interventions that
locate the preoccupations of Montréal’s design culture. The
AIA members were then able to connect many of the buildings from the tour
to the five panellists. The contradictions between the effervescent
design of the Quartier Latin and the Montréal architects’ concerns
about a withering architectural culture were the basis of heated debate
at the reception following the panel discussion.
A conference
about Montréal, design, and culture is not complete without mentioning
the array of fine dining experiences that line many of the city’s dynamic
streets such as St-Laurent, St-Denis, and Avenue Mont-Royal. Here
Montréalers can choose from sidewalk cafés and terraces to
exclusive eateries, all located within walking distance of each other on
bustling urban shopping streets that service the city’s large urban population.
Curiosity about
Montréal’s recent past was explored on the final day with a visit
to Buckminster Fuller’s Dome at the former site of Expo’67 which was topped
off with a champagne brunch and tour of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat’67.
From Habitat’67, the view of the city centre, between both the Saint Lawrence
river and Mount Royal, was the conference’s final image of a city that
so many Montréalers passionately argue about and equally love.
Owen A. Rose
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