The School of Architecture is a big, open building defined by a lightweight, transparent and permeable enclosing device (the Grid). The nature of the Grid, its configuration and material expression, is such that it will foster a close coupling between the school and the greater world outside.
The primary sign of this coupling is the Rail Track that runs through the school. The Rail Track, in combination with the various items of rolling stock characteristic of Quebec's rail system, serves the Passenger Station. The Passenger Station hovers within the school, above a ramped concourse that dives beneath.
The second sign of the Architecture School's coupling to the greater world outside are the schooling facilities themselves. The most significant element of the schooling facilities is the Studio Structure, which, like the Passenger Station, is linked to the rail system. As its name suggests, the Studio Structure is a 29,000 sq ft building platform, set upon columns and divided into six bays, one for each of the six studios. Each Studio Bay houses a Negative Exhibition, this being a slot in the platform into which void railway carriages, scooped up from the rail track by gantry crane, can be fed. Once in place, a studio, student or group can work on the void to construct an exhibition of work. The exhibition can be composed of whatever form, materials and representational media the student workers choose, but the point is the exhibition must be constructed within the immaterial parameters of the void, because if it is not then it can never be incorporated back into the railway system and taken out on tour. Once constructed a particular exhibition of work can be lifted back down and placed on a unit of rolling gear, once placed in this way it can be coupled to other, similarly placed exhibitions, which together can grow into a large Show and be sent off on tour.
Of equal importance and in addition to the Studio Structure the schooling facilities include a collection of small, palace type buildings - and a stoa; which house all the non-studio functions as specified in the competition brief. These relatively small buildings are defined within the space of the Architecture School by their being gathered upon a large dais and grouped about a plaza. The set of palace buildings includes a Library, an IT & Media Building, a Manufactory, and a Classroom Block. The Stoa accommodates a miscellany of functions including shops, staff offices and administration. As well as serving the school, it is envisioned that these buildings will be managed in such a way as to host public events more generally.
By encouraging the variety and the variability of the outer world to permeate the school the ambition is to encourage an attitude of active participation between architecture and the contemporary cultural condition. For this reason we have left detail thinking about the environmental servicing of the school out of consideration at this, the initial design phase. Instead we reserve environmental thinking for later, valuing it as an important issue for on-going discussion and debate - we are suggesting that the problem of environment is a capital crisis, implicating, but at the same time going beyond questions of an architectural nature.
(Competitor's text)
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