Are architecture and heritage still among Montreal’s major attractions? Two recent works of public art lead to the observation that today, they seem to be relayed to a secondary role: the mural Dazzle My Heart of Mansfield Street and theRing of Place Ville-Marie. Both are supported by buildings.
The first, by artist Michelle Hoogveld, was produced during the 2021 edition of the City of Montreal’s Mural Art Program. Unlike most other urban murals, Dazzle My Heart does not invest a blind wall, but the main facade of the Hotel Le Germain Montreal, a unique building. Its architecture recalls the original purpose of the building, designed in 1967 by architects Rosen, Caruso, Vecsei and engineers McMillan & Martinowicz to house the headquarters of the Engineering Institute of Canada. The unique motif of its concrete façade is the high Vierendeel beams, named after the engineer who invented this structural type more common in the construction of bridges than in the construction of buildings.
L’Ring designed by the Claude Cormier + Associés agency brings the final touch to the major development operation of Place Ville-Marie (PVM) by its owner, Ivanhoé Cambridge. In November 2017, the real estate arm of the Caisse de dépôt du Québec unveiled its ambitious downtown revitalization project by renovating its main properties: PVM, the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel and the Eaton Centre.
The work undertaken at PVM is a return to basics, by wanting to make the esplanade one of Montreal’s great gathering places, what it was in its early days, hosting terraces, shows and major events. At the end of the 1980s, the addition of flowerbeds and lampposts gave it the appearance of a square, while the commercial gallery installed under its surface was enlarged by covering the four English courtyards which gave access to it with pointed roofs.
A giant window on Mount Royal, the large flat glass roof that replaced them is more in the spirit of the project designed in 1957 by architect IM Pei and his young collaborator and future partner Henry Cobb, as is the staircase monumental substituted for the belvedere added in 1989 above the entrance to the underground parking lot located in the axis of McGill College Avenue. This vehicular access was to be hidden by a wide pedestrian ramp leading to rue Sainte-Catherine, which was never built. Ivanhoé Cambridge’s $200 million investment in its “flagship building” also includes the identical replacement of the stone facing of the facades of the buildings to which the ring hangs.
I remember a lecture delivered by Henry Cobb. He recalled the experience of his first visit to the site in 1956: a vast quadrangle, almost vacant, in the middle of which opened a large hole (the hopper of the railway tracks emerging from the Mont-Royal tunnel to reach Central Station) with, in the distance, the imposing summit of the mountain. A similar emotion inspired the general plan of PVM, of which an initial elaboration envisaged in the axis of McGill College a large courtyard dug in the center of the esplanade and the gap in the built frontage erected on Catchart Street. Wasn’t this framework established by the architecture and accentuated by the subsequent heightening of the buildings enough to enhance the perspective towards Mount Royal? Should it be emphasized by adding a giant hanging ring?
With l’Ring, Claude Cormier says he wants to “reinforce the timelessness of PVM”, while Michelle Hoogveld does not seem to have cared about the work of her predecessors. In times of pandemic, his main motivation was to bring, through color, joy in a “concrete and glass environment”. Changing the urban atmosphere is also one of Cormier’s objectives: cheering it up with humour, without denying the architecture, but adding something spectacular to it.
L’Ring was welcomed by the Government of Quebec and by the business community as a life-saving intervention as the attractiveness of Montreal was shaken by teleworking and the suspension of international travel. The mural Dazzle My Heart is one of the downtown promotional images.
Claude Cormier qualifies theRing of “gesture of great sobriety”. No doubt, given its formal simplicity. Its elemental geometry is in perfect harmony with the abstract modernist aesthetic of PVM, unless interpreted differently, symbolically.
Moreover, isn’t the sobriety that is essential nowadays of another order? Doesn’t it primarily concern our way of life? Will we mitigate the peril of global warming by relentlessly aiming to attract more international travelers and stimulate consumption to sustain growth? If, 40 years ago, the greening of the PVM esplanade was marked by nostalgia, is its spectacularization today sustainable?