Share to
Maison Haute
By : Forme Studio Architecture
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Architecture
Categories : Residential Building / Apartment & Condo ≥ 10 storeys : Silver Certification
Categories : Special Award / Architecture + Heritage Enhancement
The Maison Haute project is a 13-storey mixed-use building comprising 53 rental apartments and their communal areas, as well as a ground-floor commercial space and its storage area in the basement. Its gross surface area is 3033 m2. It has a floor-occupancy coefficient of 6.0 and an occupancy rate of 90%.
A DOWNTOWN PROJECT COMBINING HERITAGE AND MODERNITY
Located on Sainte-Catherine Street, a dynamic commercial artery emblematic of downtown, the project is strategically positioned within walking distance of 2 university campuses, several metro stations, and several major cultural venues such as Place des Arts and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, among others. This position at the extreme center of the city allows us to propose a dense project that is resolutely turned towards its surroundings, both near (on foot) and far (by public transport).
The site is occupied by a historic building with a high-quality facade, an opportunity to make a link between past and future by proposing a resolutely contemporary project that fits into a heritage setting.
The program is mixed: a retail outlet and communal spaces occupy the historic portion of the building, on the first floor and 2nd floor, in order to preserve the street-side liveliness that is the soul of Rue Sainte-Catherine. The upper floors are occupied by smaller apartments. On the roof, a collective terrace opens onto a double panorama: to the north, Mount Royal, to the south, the St. Lawrence River.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The hypercentral nature of the site enables the project to be anchored in a sustainable development rationale by densifying an already mineralized space (thus limiting urban sprawl), offering a certain mix of uses (commercial and multi-residential), and developing highly optimized and therefore more accessible units, aimed at a young, dynamic population seeking the attractiveness and liveliness of the city center, whether students or young workers. In addition, three social spaces, totalling 10% of the residential surface area, are planned: a gym and a lounge/workroom area on the 2nd floor, and a communal terrace on the roof. The entrance hall, the building’s first social space, echoes the neighborhood’s history with a mural depicting the old Forum, a historic local entertainment center. The typical first floor is organized in such a way as to leave the northeast façade free of openings, and to accommodate the vertical cores. The residential units will occupy the south-east, south-west and north-west facades, maximizing their sunlight and therefore their passive solar gain.
The place of the car is not in the city center, which is why the project has no dedicated parking, encouraging residents to use active travel and public transport.
IMPLANTATION AND VOLUMETRY
The plot, based on the City’s historic urban grid, is narrow and deep. The presence of the historic building lends the project as much cachet as complexity, highlighting the duality between heritage conservation and densification based on new design parameters. The project therefore proposes a U-shaped massing organized around a central courtyard, allowing openings to be opened up and thus maximizing the number of through-housing units benefiting from increased sunlight and natural ventilation, for greater living comfort and well-being for occupants. Maximize density, but not at the expense of occupants’ quality of life.
FACADE TREATMENT:
On the street side, the main facade has been designed as a window onto the city, giving the units luminosity and unobstructed viewpoints. This façade is composed of 3 registers:
1: restoration and enhancement of the existing facade through meticulous analysis and implementation of protective measures during the works.
2: set back the added volume to preserve the human scale of the foreground occupied by the existing building. This set-back allows two private terraces to be created for the 3rd-floor apartments.
3: architectural setting and design.
4: architectural frame and curtain wall on the full facade. The window on the city proper. The units open fully onto the city and its urban panorama, with Mount Royal in the background. An interplay of horizontal and vertical mullions creates alveoli on the scale of a residential unit. This language of white mullions and quincunxes varies on the top floors to assert the tower’s verticality and finesse.
As the project is on the property line on both sides, it generates 2 blind walls in spite of itself. To the west, the courtyard splits the massing and opens up the units to oblique views on either side of the neighboring towers. To the north, the wall remains blind, as it is occupied by vertical cores (staircases and elevators, technical sheaths). A set of randomly-arranged modules and white vertical inserts punctuate the two side facades, accentuating the verticality of the contemporary intervention. Another technical challenge posed by the adjoining building: how to build without touching the neighboring roofs (notably by installing scaffolding)? Prefabricated concrete panels were chosen as the main cladding material. Installing a crane on the roof of the project minimized the complexity of building on common ground, limiting the constraints linked to neighboring buildings, while speeding up the duration of the worksite.
EFFICIENCY
There are several aspects to achieving building efficiency, both in its economic and environmental dimensions: on the one hand, the proposed units are standardized and optimized in size to reduce costs per square foot. On the other hand, the fact that they are largely fenestrated and/or pass-through allows a certain amount of energy saving, as they benefit from natural lighting and ventilation. What’s more, no car parking space is provided in the stepped basement, which has limited excavation of the site and enabled other spaces to be maximized (ground-floor commercial space storage, storage, bicycle parking). Rather than offering small individual outdoor spaces such as balconies, the choice was made to design a collective roof as a meeting place-belvedere overlooking the city, thus minimizing thermal bridges for a more efficient envelope. Lastly, the use of prefabricated panels in the workshop helped to limit errors on site, while reducing its duration and therefore its cost.
CONCLUSION
The Maison Haute project stands proudly on Rue Sainte-Catherine as a balanced example between built heritage and contemporary intervention, between density and comfort, between quality and quantity of the living spaces created, whether individual or collective. Last but not least, it responds on its own scale to the crucial question of how to produce collective housing and build the city on top of the city, without further artificialising the land. The project is in line with the firm’s desire to make a positive contribution to the urban landscape of the City of Montreal, while respecting the physical and socio-environmental context in which the projects are inserted.
Collaboration
Architect : Forme Studio Architecture
