The return of HEC Montréal to the city center

Building the new HEC Montréal building in the city center posed a number of technical challenges for a team of Montreal architects. The result ? A building that is elegant, innovative and energy efficient.

The oldest administration school in Canada, founded in 1907, returned last year to settle very close to its place of origin. Initially housed in a beautiful Beaux-Arts style building, facing Square Viger, it moved its classes when it became affiliated with the University of Montreal. A new school was first built in 1970 on the slopes of Mount Royal, then a second in 1996.

Its first house today houses the Montreal archives center of Bibliothèque et Archives nationaux du Québec.

With the addition of a third campus, HEC Montréal is now established in the financial district, two blocks from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Inaugurated last September, its new building, named Hélène-Desmarais, was erected on a vacant lot located below the Saint-Patrick basilica.

“The chosen location posed several challenges from the start,” explains Alain Compéra, project manager and associate architect at Provencher_Roy, alongside his colleagues Anne Rouaud and Gerardo Pérez. “The lot is irregular and steeply sloping, with a drop of nine meters, the equivalent of two floors. »

Added to these constraints was the ban on building beyond the basilica bell tower. “It was a condition of sale imposed by the Saint-Patrick factory. We had to deal with this height constraint,” says Ms. Rouaud, architect and principal designer.

Two other architectural concerns: first of all, the eclectic style of this colorful district, where the red brick of the industrial buildings rubs shoulders with the aluminum and glass of the office towers, as well as the gray stone and copper roofs of the basilica . And then, another piece of the puzzle: daylight which disrupts classroom activities.

“We could not place windows facing outside in the classrooms to prevent the sun from reflecting on the screens or harming the projections on the board,” specifies Mr. Pérez, also an architect and principal designer at Provencher_Roy, leaving the specter of a concrete bunker.

Bring in the light

Faced with these challenges, the architects first decided to design a building with glass cladding so as not to disfigure the neighborhood.

However, there is no question of using traditional curtain walls due to their poor energy performance. “The insulating value of glass is very low,” recalls Mr. Pérez before revealing a Montreal innovation. “So we created composite walls, that is to say glass facings placed in front of opaque walls. »

The performance of this glass skin is 30% higher than that required by the Model National Energy Code for buildings, he maintains. With the integration of geothermal energy and the reduction of openings, the Hélène-Desmarais building meets the LEED Gold level certification criteria.

But how do you bring in natural light, then? The three architects chose an unusual path: to let the sun penetrate through the center of the building and make its way to the classrooms.

“A large glass roof tops the building. The sun can thus pass through all the floors and down to the ground floor,” explains Alain Compéra. The light, natural surfaces of the perpendicular corridors do the rest of the work in helping light travel through the building, he adds.

The building is not without windows, however. Nearly a third of the exterior walls have large glass openings to bathe the numerous work spaces scattered throughout the school in sunlight. A dotted pattern, painted on the inside of the glazing, acts as a sunshade and reduces the effect of heat. “And, at the same time, we reduce the need for air conditioning,” explains Mr. Pérez.

The students don’t realize it, but the architects tilted windows downward to encourage them to look outside. “The factory plans to rebuild the church square to connect it to a new park in rue De La Gauchetière. The windows lean in that direction,” points out Mr. Compéra.

Good neighborhood

The height constraint also forced the architects to take care of the aesthetics of the roof. “As the building is not very high, neighboring owners were afraid of having a bird’s eye view of the mechanical equipment,” explains Anne Rouaud.

A mechanical room was therefore created on the top floor to camouflage all the equipment. Green roofs have also been installed.

A detail for history lovers: inserts in the tiling of the ground floor and the exterior paths recall the foundations of the former St. Bridget refuge, erected on this land in 1869. For a century, nuns housed the homeless there before the building was abandoned and demolished in the late 1970s.

“The objectives of the project were dynamism and lightness, but also respect for the place,” summarizes Anne Rouaud with the feeling of duty accomplished.

In a previous version of this article, the names of Anne Rouaud and Gerardo Pérez were misspelled. Our apologies.