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National Bank Place
By : Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN 19th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Office / Office: Brand & Client Experience : Grand Winner
Categories : Office / Meeting & Collaboration Space : Gold certification
Categories : Office / Workplace Dining & Social Hub : Grand Winner
Categories : Education, Civic & Health / Education: Early Childhood : Gold certification
Categories : Special Awards / Interior + Craft & Custom Millwork : Gold certification
Categories : Special Awards / Interior + Art & Artistic Integration : Gold certification
Urban presence, a living environment
Approaching the business center of Montreal, where the urban fabric densifies and where the city's financial history was built in stone along Saint-Jacques Street, Place Banque Nationale stands as a new landmark. A flagship and emblematic building, the tower embodies an architecture that is both rigorous and generous, exemplary in its relationship with the environment, innovative in its design, and sustainable in its choices. Its clear geometry and assertive transparency establish a constant dialogue between the city and the interior.
Public base and collective spaces
The ground floor concentrates the multiple requirements of the program: integration of major structures, access to parking and loading docks, vertical circulation, connection to underground Montreal, implementation on two streets at distinct levels. From this constraint was born a generous spatiality, carefully orchestrated.
In the lobby, monumentality combines with warmth: planter boxes integrated into the furniture, artworks, large screens dialoguing with the public space, everything contributes to making this place lively, animated, profoundly urban. The bank branch finds its place there as a true showcase of the institution: a spectacular space by its height and transparency, it calls for exchange and becomes a crossroads.
The cafeteria extends this experience by offering an environment where nature is sometimes real, sometimes suggested. A green wall of over 20 m², abundant plantings, natural light: the space invites pauses, informal encounters, but also working differently, outside usual frameworks. Higher in the tower, two suspended atriums, spread over five floors, offer breathtaking respites, expanded spaces where the city is revealed in its full extent.
Workplace and vertical community
Open and bright spaces, unobstructed views of the outside, fluid and inclusive circulations, all contribute to creating an environment conducive to collaboration, performance, and well-being. The concept of vertical community is powerfully expressed here. The stairs along the southwest facade connect the common spaces and the offices from one floor to the next, revealing the tower's inner life to the city itself.
In fact, much more than a simple headquarters, Place Banque Nationale affirms the institution's presence in the city, through this open, inhabited, sustainable building, where architecture constitutes a vector of dialogue, gathering, and projection toward the future.
Program
Office tower, bank branch, business center, cafeteria, multifunctional conference room, daycare, training center, health center, two-level cafeteria, 2 green roof terraces, 6 levels of underground parking, including 400 bicycle spaces [102,200 m² - 40 floors - LEED v4 NC Gold certified - WELL v2 pilot Gold targeted].
Collaboration
Architect : Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes
Engineering : WSP
Engineering : Bouthillette Parizeau
Engineering : Pageau Morel
Engineering : Marchand Houle et associés
Landscape architecture : CCxA
Photo credit