ARC3015Y F
Instructor: Gilles Saucier
Meeting Section: L0105
Tuesday, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

 

“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.” – G.K. Chesterton

 

Changing relationships between and within neighbourhoods, the spaces those neighbourhoods support and the population inhabiting them determine how a city transforms over time as influenced by political, socio-economic and technological factors. Contemporary cities are notably marked by varying densities within neighbourhoods, each with an infinite capacity to change. As the densities of adjacent neighbourhoods increase (driven largely by economic conditions) they converge, creating a pressure on the spaces bounded by them. While different typologies within a neighbourhood typically grow in an ordered (zoned) way, there are always conditions that arise unplanned and ad hoc that create leftover spaces. These spaces present an opportunity for dynamic public programme where culture is simultaneously a coalescence of the surrounding context and a catalyst for enhancing the neighbourhood community. Cultural programme, and in-particular art, can act as a unifier and a shared amenity for a community.The role of art spaces, through their function as public spaces can enhance the community. Looking at the city from this perspective helps embrace the design of architecture as a complex, broad mission that — regardless of its scale — should not be reduced to creating islands but focus on enabling a diversity of programs fully connected with urban networks, landscape and community.

Defining what it means to be a contemporary and culturally relevant space within the city — one in which inhabitants of the project and neighbourhood are reciprocally engaged with art on an everyday basis (across various media) – suggests that architecture can move beyond art as metaphor, and through technology make art a literal connective experience.

The project site is located in the Marconi-Alexandra district of Montréal and will focus on diverse interstitial urban spaces in order to emphasize potential important strategic links between converging programs and neighbourhoods. While navigating the urban scale to meaningfully connect these converging yet varied zones of the surrounding fabric (industrial, residential, commercial sectors), the project takes its shape both in defining a new public space through and within the landscape/city fabric and in designing multiple layered program structures that combine a community centre, art studios, exhibition spaces, park spaces, and tech office space.

Crucial to the studio is the way the new architectural intervention will interact with the adjacent university campus, tech industry office complexes, residential fabric and the sinuous rail line. Students will explore how to successfully implement a needed cultural centre at the convergence of these zones. The studio will permit each student to critically investigate the possibilities of programming and designing a unique project, defining what it means to be a contemporary and culturally relevant institution within the city. Through its integration along this new path, the project will serve as a catalyst for public space in a neighbourhood, which, like many others in Montreal, has no such existing space.

Instructor Bio:

Gilles Saucier graduated from the School of Architecture at Université Laval in 1982. Soon after he established the Montréal architectural firm Saucier+Perrotte Architectes, a multidisciplinary practice internationally renowned for its institutional, cultural, and residential projects. Since 1990, he has been a visiting professor and an invited critic at several Canadian and American universities As Design Partner, he is responsible for the design integrity of all projects, with specific attention given to architecture’s connection to geology and the landscape. In 2004, his firm represented Canada at the prestigious Architecture Biennale of Venice. In 2014, Gilles Saucier and his partner André Perrotte were the first recipients of the new Prix du Québec for design and architecture, the Prix Ernest-Cormier and they are the recipients of the Gold Medal 2018 from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Beginning in 2002, the Canadian Center for Architecture began archiving a large selection of drawings and models produced by the firm.