It is not only the goal, but the obligation of entrants in a ideas competition to explore the vistas which new architectural and urban concepts, material sciences, construction technologies, social theories and cultural philosophies afford. It is in this spirit which speaks to the needs and potential of the site, which respects its great history and, most importantly, which contributes to a vision of Montréal's future.
The evolution of the city has slowly begun to test the viability of time-honored urban strategies. Increasingly heterogeneous populations, global economies and unprecedented advances in technology have combined to accelerate the transformation of developing cities such as Montréal.
In light of these fundamental changes, traditional models of the city must yield to newer ideas which better captures the city's subtle texture of interrelationships.
Such a concept is Event-Structure. Event-Structure is the dynamic matrix which operates over and above the rigidly choreographed coordination of structured events central to the traditional urban concepts of planning, building and programming. It conceptualizes the non-rational "excess" which stages and conditions the flux of small scale social, economic and political encounters vital to every city's unique self-identity.
We suggest that a three-dimensional Urban Place could engender the appropriate contemporary event-structure for place Jacques-Cartier.
Above all it is emphasized that it is not our intention to suggest a massive building for the site. The proposal would be unlike any building.
(From ARQ Magazine, February 1991, no 59, p.23)
The jury would like to emphasize, by its special mention award to project 198, the importance in an idea competition that includes intellectual explorations, relying not on their practicalness but on international architectural discourse.
The author has proposed an event-structure, three-dimensional urban place which corresponds with the historic difference, functionally and architecturally, between a traditional piazza and a contemporary shopping mall. A series of symbolic structures, with very complex and problematic geometries and configurations, are metaphors which refer to the "ice flows" of old come to the foot of Montréal.
"Architectural clouds", the presence of this insight in a free and open urban space establishes the distinction between the massive buildings and this ephemeral appearing proposition. The free forms, icy, dynamic and in movement, made with the most modern materials and reinforced by the extreme contrast with its traditional context, creates a dramatic symbol, memorable and full of meaning.
The radical course towards a symbolic architectural language gives to the project a specific intellectual energy, but very evidently distances it from reality and from any possibility of integration with the existing context of Vieux-Montréal.
With this special mention the jury wishes to underline the necessity to maintain an intellectual dialogue in order to avoid the extremes of traditional conservatism and of radicalism so evident amongst the different views and conceptions concerning construction in historic cities.
(Excerpt from the jury's comments)
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