The new pavilion is located in the heart of an eclectic museum complex, characterized by its historical and architectural diversity. Its resolutely contemporary architecture asserts its identity and that of its era. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec is a museum of fine arts that houses a particularly wide range of Quebec art, from ancient art to contemporary art. It is also a contemporary architecture that is a strong part of the city's architectural heritage.
Anchored in the footsteps of the Dominican Fathers' convent, designed around its inner courtyard, the auditorium, the new pavilion establishes a coherent relationship with the Saint Dominique church and its presbytery and accentuates the identity and structuring character of the whole. Through its architecture, the tension of a monolithic volume floating on a transparent base, it implements a strong dialectic of the container and the content. It is in this notion of duality that the new pavilion finds its identity, celebrating the past and opening up to the future.
The articulation of light, space and matter, the balance it creates, the anchoring of its building imbued with lightness in the heaviness of the surrounding architectural mass, and its environment that it integrates through the play of full and empty spaces, transforms the simple visit of this museum into a slow sensory, spiritual immersion in art, memory and architecture.
Tension, attraction of opposites
The characteristic of the architecture of the new pavilion is based on a formal dialectic, a setting in tension in a constant game between shadow and light, gravity and weightlessness, mineral and vegetal, which hides and reveals itself, forming an ideal balance between the old and the new.
Typological inversion
The fundamental dichotomy present in the formation of the Upper and Lower Town from the rocky promontory of Cap Diamant to the Saint Charles River is reiterated in the architecture of the new pavilion. The mineral upper part asserts its imposing protective vocation, while the lower part is transparent and open. The effect is made more striking, once night falls, by the lighting of its base. A volume of "Light and transparency", it belongs to the urban space, merging interior and exterior.
Roof / facade
The in-depth study of the roof allowed us to develop an efficient and elaborate architecture. Specifically adapted to the site and its needs, a tool that is both efficient from an ecological point of view and for highlighting the works, the roof is the dominant element of the project. Faceted interior/exterior planes: Extension of a formal language established by the angular roofs of the church and the presbytery and common to Quebec City. The roof form adapts and connects to the existing buildings and offers various heights according to the needs. Its faceted diamond shape is expressed in the façade to form a unique and continuous volume. The Canadian style metal cladding in ochre stabilized pre-patinated copper and the use of Quebec City brick, not recycled from the site itself, shaped into red ochre diamond points reinforces the idea of continuity through the correspondence of colors and strengthens the monolithic image of the whole.
This mass imposes its physical presence and its gravity by alternating brick facets, as if pixelated thanks to a pattern of holes providing an additional source of light, in a rhythm that counterbalances its horizontal stretching and dissolves its very mass. Structurally independent from the presbytery, delicately and precisely meeting its ridge with a glazed facet, the new roof allows the existing south-facing openings to benefit from natural light. This dynamic structure, composed of faceted planes whose high point is located in the center of the volume, is designed to function optimally in snowy conditions and take advantage of the natural elements of the site. The orientation of the structure is favorable to the prevailing winds used against the accumulation of snow, the shape of the structure is favorable to the flow of water around the periphery, the openings capture and use the light from the north and allow direct views of the sky, allowing natural light to penetrate the volume in a homogeneous manner, the variation in the height of the glass provides an optimum level of natural light and accentuates the light around the periphery, and the structure has been designed for economy of construction, avoiding any visible elements and any external contact of snow on the glass. Thus reducing the artificial lighting to its strict minimum, using it as an integrated and compensatory indirect lighting.
Artistic intervention
This new pavilion will be conceived as a space that envisions new models of relationship, artistic and architectural, with particular places. The building is designed to activate or provoke the visitor's experience by commissioning works in a free choice of location. The tension between the building, the site and an artist is at the heart of this project, in a necessary complementarity. In this project we revisit the idea that painting, sculpture and architecture share a predefined relationship that is inspired by each other. This project constitutes a unique opportunity in which the artist and the architect share the same "studio" (albeit metaphorically), the space of the new pavilion. Art and space together form an equation to question and redefine the boundaries of their own discipline. At the boundaries of architecture, nature and art, the new Pavilion offers us an aesthetic as well as a social and political experience, making a crucial contribution to the contemporary debate on art, architecture and the environment. Our project, the new pavilion, must consider - as the artist Olivier Bardin would define it in reference to his own work in a specific site - how the commissioned artworks meet the site itself. The elevation, literally, of the building, the lifting of the pavilion from its own base, will facilitate and encourage artistic and social encounters at ground level. It allows for the literal merging of exterior and interior and allows for new ephemeral or temporary art installations to be visible from the surrounding site.
(From competitor's text)
(Unofficial automated translation)
STAGE 1
-The concept proposes the creation of a new ensemble that is harmonious and coherent with St. Dominic's Church.
-The articulated form and uniformity of roof height helps unify all elements of the pavilion, including the auditorium.
-The organization of the plan at street level proposes a pedestrian pathway highlighting Wolfe-Montcalm Avenue and the entrance to the Plains while leading to the heart of the museum complex.
-The exhibition spaces offer great flexibility in terms of layout.
-Occupying the courtyard preserves the memory of the site but is questionable from an operational point of view; the auditorium must be both visually and acoustically isolable.
-The main entrance directly onto the grounds of the Plains is not permitted; this issue has already been negotiated with the federal government. In addition, this option obliterated Wolfe's Well, a historic monument to be highlighted.
-The brick cladding raises questions and expectations in terms of visual permeability; the brick cannot be reused due to its poor quality.
-The contrast of the brick mass, floating above the transparent first floor, represents a strong image of the Museum's openness to the city and park; however, it is not appropriate for the exhibition function.
STAGE 2
This project proposes a valid approach that is experimental in nature, against some of the obvious remarks including:
-the lack of an entrance to the city;
-the uniformity of the facades;
-the use of the entire site;
-the industrial allegory in an urban museum context.
It generates spaces that differ from the program: the main entrance at the back, the transparent auditorium, the temporary exhibition on the street, and on two (2) levels, the roof encompassing the presbytery.
The result is rather brutal facades, a volumetry weighing down the whole with the church and an omnipresent industrial roof. One wonders about the foundations of the concept, despite the positive evolution since stage 1.
The interior design revolves around the centrifugal auditorium, a function that is secondary to the program but whose formalization and possible uses did not convince the jury.
The concept offers little potential for adaptability because it has prioritized elements that are not priorities for the Museum and the site.
(From jury report)
(Unofficial automated translation)
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