ARCHITECTURE BECOMES LANDSCAPE
"Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought" - Robert Smithson
The challenge launched by the City of Montreal in the context of this competition illustrates the municipal aims to reconcile resources, place and community through the development of a soccer complex. Our analysis of this challenge highlights the importance of this vision and a desire to strengthen a community's identity. We believe that the new soccer complex must meet this challenge. The various levels of reading of the program allow us to envisage the creation of a building dedicated to sports functions, the development of spaces for interaction and the creation of a true social hub. When architecture sees wider, when it composes and becomes a landscape, this potential becomes real.
In our proposal, existing and new specialized functions -- representing soccer fields, skateboard center, parking lots and park areas -- combine to create an unusual landscape. Our project puts forward a composition of volumes and spaces, interior and exterior places of exchange, furnished with slopes and embankments that merge with the landscape and enrich the experience of the city.
The found and renewed landscape
The Miron quarry and its surroundings are the scene of landscape transformations worthy of a vast Land Art project. As the only large-scale outdoor space on the island, the magnificent green space of the SMEC is unique in Montreal. In a city known for its plateaus and mountains, its topography is somewhat reminiscent of the ravines of Los Angeles or Toronto. Our project is inspired by the particularity of this experience of overlooking a large space to propose an indoor soccer field embedded in the earth.
Celebrating the discovery of the soccer field
Our exploration therefore composes with the found conditions: the embankment and cliffs, the quarry and the boulevard. The experience of the existing embankment is a starting point for a poetic look at the topography. By blurring the line between landscape and building, our vision for the site maintains the slope on Papineau for its functional qualities and heritage value and shapes new slopes and hills to reinforce the experience of the site and to celebrate the progressive discovery of the indoor soccer field.
The programmatic elements - locker rooms, multipurpose rooms, administration, restaurant, technical rooms, etc. - are organized to create interior slopes. - The programmatic elements - locker rooms, multi-purpose rooms, administration, restaurant, technical rooms, etc. - are organized to create artificial indoor slopes, counter-sloping the natural outdoor slopes. Covered with the same artificial turf as the playing field, these volumes blend with both the outer slopes and the ground to create a shaped topography without apparent architectural volume.
The bleachers are placed on top of the artificial slopes and are dispersed to offer spectators the choice of sitting on conventional concrete bleachers or directly on the artificial grass slope. The roof, a civic signage element, floats over this shaped topography. Conceived as a wing of heroic proportions, it stands out as the only element of the purely architectural project.
A responsible and sustainable overall project
Our stance and commitment to the community will be realized in a project with a minimal ecological footprint. This project aims for a LEED Gold certification. It proposes innovations in its approach to energy performance, in ventilation and air treatment, in lighting, and in the treatment of outdoor spaces.
(From competitor's text)
(Unofficial automated translation)
"A strong image but one whose development has not provided the expected responses."
The project proposes an image of inverted topography, where the modulation of the ground is covered by a large cantilevered roof, floating above the exterior welcome ramp, leading spectators to the top of the bleachers.
The jury deplores the evolution of the concept, which had good potential in stage 1: from an undeniable strength of identity, the organization proposes an unresolved functional solution, leading to a dead end.
The jury notes that the comments made in Stage 1 were not given much consideration and could be repeated in this stage.
The project remained at the graphic level; it is difficult to read at the functional level, which lacks clarity.
The jury notes that no project offers the functional solution, the identity desire clearly mentioned in the program and the respect of the budget.
(From jury report)
(Unofficial automated translation)
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