A Contemporary Reading of a Heritage Building
Conservation through reuse was the implicit theme of the three-stage International Architecture Competition held by PHI for its new contemporary art pavilion in Montreal. The goal was to design a space to host PHI Contemporary's installations, working with four heritage buildings and a vacant lot. After the PHI Foundation (2007) and the PHI Centre (2012), PHI Contemporary is the third pavilion to be built in Old Montreal. The projects submitted represent a good sample of current 'reuse' strategies.
Architectural 'reuse' can also be understood as a 'reconversion problem' because of the complexities involved in transforming materials, programs and uses, in this case for buildings up to 300 years old. PHI decided to tackle this issue through an international competition process. A total of 65 teams responded to the call, of which only 11 qualified. This CCC publication presents in detail the 18 proposals from the three stages of the competition: the 11 from the first stage, the 5 from the second stage and the 2 proposals selected for the third stage.
The competition was won by the only consortium of the lot, made up of the firms Kuehn Malvezzi (Germany) and Pelletier de Fontenay (Canada). This is not the first time the duo has worked together: in 2014, they won the competition to renew the installations at the Montréal Insectarium. It is also worth noting that even before it was built, the winning proposal for PHI Contemporary received an Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect in 2022.
In order to meet the constraints and high expectations of the many institutional stakeholders involved in this heritage project, a multidisciplinary jury was assembled, combining local and international perspectives from the fields of museology, architecture, academia and the arts. Several levels of government are involved, as the buildings to be transformed as part of the competition are listed in urban heritage assessment documents (municipal) and are protected under Québec's Cultural Heritage Act as "located in the heritage of Montréal (Old Montréal)" (provincial).
The International Architecture Competition for the PHI Contemporary demonstrates the complexity of heritage in transformation. Indeed the competition documentation anticipated a number of regulatory scenarios and other descriptions of the authorities involved. For example, the municipal and provincial authorities responsible for its governance were presented in a diagram with the authorizations to which the winning project would be subject in order to be built. Nonetheless, from the point of view of the architecture project, the reuse of heritage buildings cannot be reduced to a simple exercise of complying with legal frameworks or institutional criteria.
Overall, the competition proposals achieve to update the use of the host buildings, as required by the brief. But the competition brief also emphasizes that it is not so much a question of "identifying the de facto historical dimensions of the site and preserving them conceptually, but rather of determining those that can be enhanced through their link with the contemporary vocation of the building, the character of the institution that will run it, and the works and people that will occupy it" [our translation] (Brief B, p.29).
Given that PHI's mission is resolutely oriented towards the promotion of contemporary artistic practices, it is clear that the expected architecture project should not adopt an attitude of commemoration or restitution, but rather one of support for the works on display: "to contrast the historical with the contemporary" [our translation] (Brief B, p.29). The aim is to create a new space to accommodate the 6900 square meters required by the PHI Contemporary.
As for the proposals submitted for the third and final stage, Kuehn Malvezzi and Pelletier de Fontenay have designed an open platform, an architectural gesture that invites the public to wander around the heritage buildings, like a stage from which to contemplate the immediate heritage and urban context. This architectural device expresses a clear distinction between the preserved existing and the new interventions, and at the same time constitutes a new and inseparable physical link between the old and the new. In order to maximize the use of space, the basement is planned to have two storeys and the Maison Louis-Viger is hollowed out on three sides. The proposal includes a phased approach to the construction work, including archaeological excavations, demonstrating a concern rooted in the realities of building with an existing historic structure.
Kersten Geers and David Van Severen chose instead to increase the number of open spaces on the ground floor and to create gardens, given the lack of green public spaces in Old Montreal. The main entrance on Bonsecours is planned through a garden, which could be more complex to manage in terms of accessibility and maintenance in the winter conditions we are experiencing. However, it is worth noting the desire to work within the existing space of the foundations and template of the Maison Viger. Here the relationship with the existing structure is more subtle, less contrasting. The density of the project is also greater and the massing more compact, with less space built in the basement and on the ground floor.
What legacy for Montreal's architectural culture?
The documentation of this competition provides food for thought in the search for a dialogue between Montreal’s historical built heritage and its architectural culture, in a relationship of manifest transformation, in which one the oldest historical buildings of the city is host to the most contemporary architectural interventions. In this interaction, the boundaries between heritage conservation and contemporary architecture tend to blur: these two value systems seem to work together.
Although the issue of integrating historical heritage into contemporary life consists, as the late researcher and theoretician Françoise Choay, who died in 2025, so aptly put it, of "reintroducing a disused monument into the circuit of living uses" [our translation] (Choay, 1996, p.163), it is necessary to specify the conditions of this reintroduction. It is important that the quantitative criteria typical of certain building regulations should be accompanied by indicators designed to anticipate or qualify the nature of the relationship between architecture and heritage.
Architecture, through the project competition, appears here as a means of thinking about these changes and of developing a conceptual, ethical and constructive commitment to heritage. As we move from dream to reality, we can ask ourselves what will remain of the winning entry after consultation with the many stakeholders. Will the built project be able to honor the winning concept?
References
Competition documents (Rules, brief, annexes, jury reports, projects)
Choay, Françoise. 1996 [1992]. L’allégorie du patrimoine. La couleur des idées. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Kalman, Harold, et Marcus R. Létourneau. 2021. Heritage Planning: Principles and Process. New York, NY: Routledge.
Plevoets, Bie, et Koenraad Van Cleempoel. 2019. Adaptive Reuse of the Built Heritage: Concepts and Cases of an Emerging Discipline. London ; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
As a future repository for PHI's legacy, PHI Contemporary will be a new and permanent space to consolidate, extend and intersect PHI's cultural offer, its communities, and the public life of the city.
Located in Old Montreal, and built upon a site rife with history - comprising an assemblage of four historical buildings and an adjacent vacant lot - PHI Contemporary will consolidate the public cultural offer currently housed within PHI Foundation and PHI Centre. The 6 900 m² / 74 000 ft² project will house exhibition spaces, a network of new media galleries, mediation, research and studio spaces, and an expansive public domain.
(From website)
Kollectif, PHI Contemporain | Les 2 grands finalistes sélectionnés, Kollectif, 2022
Baillargeon, Stéphane, Cinq manières de concevoir le nouveau Phi Contemporain, Le Devoir, 2022, Montréal
PHI Contemporain : les lauréats du concours architectural sont dévoilés, Portail Constructo, 2022
Lanthier, Christine, PHI Contemporain - Les finalistes sont connus, Ordre des architectes du Québec, 2022
Clément, Éric, Projet de Phi Contemporain | Kuehn Malvezzi+Pelletier de Fontenay signeront l’architecture, La Presse, 2022, Montréal
Radio-Canada, PHI Contemporain, un nouveau centre d’arts numériques au Vieux-Montréal en 2026, Radio-Canada.ca, 2022
