“Give me a point of support and I will lift the world” — Archimedes
Quebec City is inseparable from the splendors of its natural landscape. Originally, without even consulting geological studies, we can clearly see that the city of Quebec was an island, like its neighbor, Île d’Orléans. We can still discern its “contours” in the landscape of the St. Lawrence valley. The dry lowlands, formerly the northern channel of a vanished sea, between mountains and rocks, have partly become the Lower Town of Quebec; “lower town” at the bottom of the dry sea.
Slowly, Lower Town grows in height and becomes a “shoal” of the Champlain Sea, a swelling of buildings in conflict with the horizon and the mountains. Montreal has its “fulcrum” to control the uprising of buildings: no one can build higher than Mount Royal. The words of Serge Bouchard, anthropologist, were reported as follows: “If I am on Mount Royal and I look in the distance, I see the Champlain Sea. »
Unlike Montreal, in Quebec, there is no “support point”, as clear and intelligible, to guide densification and the “uprising of constructions”. From the Rock of Quebec, particularly in the historic zone, on the north side, the “field of vision” fades and gradually disappears. There are still some good visual areas towards the Laurentian mountains; large openings remain.
The risk, however, is to let the valley disappear, visually and, with it, the “Champlain Sea”, without agreement with the very nature of this landscape, without an urban composition of interest. Bland city on the horizon.
A mayor in Lyon
However, Mayor Marchand’s mission to Lyon last year, without his knowing it, offered us rather inspiring images: that of a mayor who walks on the high paths of another city, like the we have always been walking in Quebec. This is what we could call, in Quebec, the “Champlain walks”, in Lyon it is the “Roman paths”, high up, which lead to the spectacle, to the stone agora built thousands of years ago. years, at the top of the city.
In Quebec, we don’t move towards the show: we are in front of it and inside it, in the show itself. We stay on the horizon, on an “old island in the Champlain Sea” with an “upper town which runs along this old rock of America and blends – precisely – into the depths of the vanished sea, into the valley and at the foot of the mountains, in the lower town. This is the spectacle in which we participate; taking the full measure of it is essential.
Lyon, cinema and animation
The Lumière brothers, in Lyon, in 1896, projected The arrival of a train at La Ciotat station, founding myth of cinema. “Animated photography”, today described as the seventh art, had just been born. In a certain evolutionary order, in Quebec, almost a century later, Daniel Langlois and his team were busy, point by point, digitizing and animating Tony de Peltrie, a character sculpted in clay, who would become the star of an acclaimed and award-winning animated film (1985). Langlois founded Softimage the following year (modeling and animation software). We know the rest: Jurassic Park… The world of cinema was gradually acquiring new modeling and animation tools with this new ally: Softimage.
In 1993, having just graduated in architecture, with a project under my belt, inspired, among other things, by the work of the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, I went to the Softimage research department to discuss “fractals and the mathematics of chaos”, a Nature’s geometry. Benoît Mandelbrot, guest speaker by the Quebec Mathematical Association, introduced us to “new worlds and new landscapes” generated from simple equations, a world of depths: “an endless ocean, a returning Champlain sea , applicable to cities and architecture.”
Like Daniel Langlois’ team – perhaps – he used new tools to “address old problems”: the mathematics of chaos and fractals will be used in animated cinema (depth effect).
Arago’s fulcrum
In Quebec, the Faubourg staircase, Saint-Jean-Baptiste district, undoubtedly the most beautiful staircase in the city and one of the best observation points, is located at the end of rue Arago (this street adopts the line of the “Logan geological fault” while running along the northern cliff). This observation point is neither the lower town nor the upper town: it is the middle town. We do not reach the highest level of the city nor the lowest level. The staircase allows you to go from the Saint-Laurent platform (the Lower Town) to the Appalachians (the Upper Town). Everything is there.
Mandelbrot used new tools to “address old problems.” Using observation points, well distributed on the cliff, we can define the “fields of vision” to be protected and produce a quality urban composition: “in depth” without squandering the natural heritage. The Faubourg staircase, due to its strategic, geological position, halfway up the city, with its observation platform, becomes a precious landmark: the fulcrum of Arago.
Combine the landscape
Showcasing the splendors of Quebec City without urban sprawl, in depth, that is the challenge. Densifying and deploying new high-rise buildings should be part of an urban composition of interest, even sought-after, of quality. “Strategic fields of vision and views” should be listed and measured against reference points, “support points”. Identifying the contours of future real estate development “visually and point by point” is desirable. New tools dedicated to the production of demonstrations exist.
The sky of Quebec is a common good. Carl Sagan, scientist, in one of his books, on the theme “science and hope”, brings back this Inuit poem: “Two men arrive at a hole in the sky / One of the men asks the other to lift it / But the splendors of the sky were so intoxicating / For the man who was already looking above the edge of this landscape / That he lost his memory, that he forgot his companion / Whom he had promised to help / Escaping alone into all the splendor of the sky and the horizon. »