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407-409 McGill
By : Lemay
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 14th edition
Discipline : Architecture
Categories : Commercial Building / Mid & High-Rise Office Building (≥ 5 storey-high) : Gold Certification
This project introduces a bold 11-storey sliver to Old Montreal’s centenary Shaughnessy Building, a beaux-arts-inspired early North American skyscraper with Chicago School composition.
The project maximizes the adjacent and formerly vacant lot, an extremely confined space in a high-density area, and creates interior connections with the Shaughnessy, as well as a new restaurant space that reinforces street-level connections.
The architecture of Lemay’s extension is a contemporary response to the classical base, antique-style columns and capital. It reinterprets these alignments with a strong contrast of materials while maintaining a continuity with the original building and its surroundings.
The addition’s perfectly smooth façade creates a silence that strengthens the older volume, adopting a brilliant character in the setting sun. The design team considered this and every other possible viewplane in its framing of modern downtown and Old Montreal.
The striking glass cut-out on McGill Street is counterbalanced with high-quality, classical materials on Le Moyne Street that echo the existing masonry. While the contemporary crown reaffirms the style of the side façade, a metal line separates past and present forms.
This sensitive integration is the product of close collaboration with heritage authorities, at once a contemporary extension of the stately office building and a tribute to architectural history.
Collaboration
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