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Prise d’eau Canal de l’Aqueduc
By : Smith Vigeant Architectes Inc.
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 15th edition
Discipline : Architecture
Categories : Commercial Building / Factory & Warehouse : Platinum Winner, Gold Certification
Water intake, Aqueduct Canal.
In order to improve water quality, the city has built a new water intake along the Aqueduct Canal. It is connected to the Atwater filtration plant by a 900 meter long tunnel and allows the transport of more than 600,000m3 of water per day, or forty percent of the drinking water of the of the metropolis. The fully automated machine building is designed to exclusively accommodate turbines and a filter system which provide initial cleaning of debris and sediment.
Context and challenges
Since its appearance, industrial architecture has been the subject of negative perception, even today, despite the progression of industrial heritage values. Reduced to the expression of a technical function, this unsightly architecture must be concealed. This community concern was imposed from the outset in the design process. The designers were asked to answer this question: how to make “beautiful architecture” with a machine building and moreover set within a high quality landscaped space.
For the client and the designers, it was essential to take care of the visual impact of the building in this green setting, through a discreet, delicate insertion while assuming an expressive, significant architecture.
Urban composition, environmental impact
The parallel layout to the canal and Champlain Boulevard between Rielle and Gordon streets has made it possible to maintain the visual openings from its two streets. The bike path is diverted to run between the building and the street, the new intersection is set up at the corner of rue Gordon and boulevard Champlain.
The greening of the building was a natural choice. The first idea was to replace as much vegetation as had been removed. The green roof thus makes it possible to recreate a green space as large as that removed for the footprint of the building. A vegetal screen installed on the East facade made up of stretched stainless steel cables, accommodates climbing and covering plants.
Water and light
The concept was clearly inspired by the nature of water. The metaphor infuses both the materials and the composition. Like water that always runs in the same direction but never the same path, the building has an unchanging appearance, however, it varies according to the weather and the seasons. The glass offers a gradation of blue, sparkling or shimmering pixels depending on the time of day, like the surface of the water. At night, the building envelope offers a soft and reassuring light. In summer it is adorned with a vegetable layer, and in winter the color of the glass evokes a block of ice.
The horizontal lines of the volumetry, inscribed in the strata formed by the base, the glass cube and the parapet, evoke the perpetual horizontality of water. While the verticality of the colored bands of the facade and the supports on which the plants climb on the base in summer recalls the ascent towards the light, with which the water gives life.
From a utilitarian building dedicated to concealment, the architects have, through their formal choices, attempted a significant architecture in harmony with its environment which expresses in the public space values essential to the life of the surrounding community. Sleek, bright and straightforward, the water and light building also offers a visual signature that animates the space and reminds us how much these precious resources call for our attention.
Collaboration
