Tag Archives: Milton-Parc

Iconic Montreal Architecture – Complexe Desjardins

A quick summation before my screed. Here’s why I think Complexe Desjardins is an exceptional example of Montreal architecture:

1. It’s balanced without being symmetrical. The four towers are of different heights, ascending clockwise like a giant staircase. The tallest tower is built on the lowest ground, the shortest tower is built on the highest. The illusion this creates makes the towers seem shorter when viewed from the north, and taller when viewed from the south. Finally, the four towers are each offset from the centre of the podiums they’re set on. The arrangement was intended to give the impression of a city within the city, buildings in harmony without much indication it’s a single common development.

2. It occupies a pivotal and central section of the city’s Underground City, as well as a central ‘institutional axis’ running north-south from Sherbrooke all the way down into Old Montreal. It connects provincial and federal government offices with housing and hotels, office and retail space to university buildings, an arts museum, concert hall and diverse other performance venues, Métro stations and parking garages to a convention centre and the World Trade Centre. Few other buildings in Montreal connect as many diverse services and purposes as Complexe Desjardins.

3. The large central atrium is essentially a public city square, protected from the elements and inclement weather by massive glass walls. The natural lighting emphasizes the interior volume without making it feel heavy – which is difficult to do with so much concrete. Combined with captured body heat cycled through between the Métro stations, not to mention the fountain and plants, the atrium has an almost tropical feel, especially in the dead of winter. Complexe Desjardins was the only ‘superblock’ built in that era with a public space at its centre and further, specifically designed to facilitate pedestrian traffic and draw it in off the streets.

Complexe Desjardins, August 1976 - Archives de Montréal. In the foreground, the Ville Marie Expressway and what remained of Chinatown. In the background, the controversial La Cité complex is under construction.
Complexe Desjardins, August 1976 – Archives de Montréal. In the foreground, the Ville Marie Expressway and what remained of Chinatown. In the background, the controversial La Cité complex is under construction.

If you don’t know Complexe Desjardins already, just wait for a cloudy night and look towards the city centre. The hazy green light hanging low in the sky will lead you right to it. Complexe Desjardins completed a facelift recently that involved adding a massive lighting installation that now bathes the complex’s office towers in a brilliant emerald glow. The lighting scheme devised by Lightemotion projects a ‘luminous pathway’ drawing attention to the Quartier des Spectacles from afar and identifies the buildings as belonging to the Desjardins Movement by using their trademark colour. It’s excellent advertising, but I hope it doesn’t catch on. Two beacons are enough.

I feel this new lighting scheme is appropriate, like we’ve established a kind of balance to our city’s night-lights. The Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s largest bank, has a rotating beacon atop their head office at Place Ville Marie. The Desjardins Movement, North America’s largest credit-union, now also commands a place in our night sky.

I make mention of this comparison between PVM and Complexe Desjardins for a reason – the latter was built to ‘balance’ the former.

Together, Place Ville Marie and Complexe Desjardins form useful ‘bookends’ of Montreal’s ‘edifice complex era’ – a period in time in which urban development was almost exclusively of massive scale and often intended to include all manner of activity within an ostensibly cohesive mega-structures. Between 1958 and 1977 Montreal got its Métro system, hosted Expo 67 and the 1976 Summer Games. Massive multi-purpose complexes occupying entire city blocks were constructed all throughout this period – Westmount Square, Place Alexis-Nihon, Place Victoria, Place Dupuis and the La Cité complex in Milton-Parc to name but a few.

Complexe Desjardins and Place Ville Marie are arguably the best overall examples of the then popular ‘superblock’; though they are nearly opposite constructions in terms of their form, both managed to greatly surpass expectations in terms of the functions they play within Montreal’s urban environment. These are complimentary structures; dissimilar, asymmetric and yet somehow harmonious and balanced as well.

The first ICAO Headquarters, upon completion in 1949. In the background, the office tower and annex of Bell Canada. At far right, part of CN's Central Station
The first ICAO Headquarters, upon completion in 1949. In the background, the office tower and annex of Bell Canada. At far right, part of CN’s Central Station

In the late 1950s and early 1960s several large buildings were constructed in quick succession in proximity to Montreal’s largest and most important train stations. Canadian National Railways owned a considerable amount of land along a north-south axis running from Saint Catherine Street down to Saint Antoine between University and Mansfield, and by the end of the last war there was considerable interest in developing it to relieve congestion in Old Montreal.

There were other reasons to develop CN’s land. For much of the 20th century, the land north of René Lévesque Boulevard was a large open pit with Central Station’s rail yard at its bottom. Beginning in the late 1940s CN began to develop the site, first building a permanent home for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) then followed by the Queen Elizabeth Hotel and CN’s head office. By mid-decade CN had turned its attention to the pit and endeavoured to build an office complex of several buildings of different heights, set around a public plaza, and integrated into the Central Station complex. The undertaking was absolutely massive: the pit was so large there’s an amount of space underground equivalent to all the rentable space in the tower and buildings above. Place Ville Marie was Montreal’s first ‘city within the city’ styled developments.

By 1962 the cruciform tower of Place Ville Marie had been completed, a massive ‘tear’ in the urban fabric had been mended, and a new modern city centre was taking shape in the far western districts of the city. The Royal Bank of Canada was involved from the start and became the tower’s anchor tenant. Not to be outdone, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce decided to build their own Internationalist-styled tower just two blocks further west at the same time, the projects competing against one another in terms of height (and on this note, though today neither are Montreal’s tallest towers, they each held the title of tallest in Canada and the British Commonwealth between 1962 and 1964. Both are often mistaken for Montreal’s tallest to this day: the CIBC Tower is slender and features a prominent antenna, while PVM is built on higher ground than any other skyscraper in the city).

Montreal early 1960s, with CIBC Tower, Place Ville Marie and CIL House under construction.
Montreal early 1960s, with CIBC Tower, Place Ville Marie and CIL House under construction.

In a matter of a few years a tectonic shift had occurred in Montreal, re-locating the city’s central business district from Saint James Street in Old Montreal to the environs of Dorchester Square to the northwest. By 1970, several other major developments had taken place within the vicinity of the city’s main train stations, including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s CIL House at the southeast corner of University and René Lévesque, Terminal Tower at 800 René Lévesque, Place du Canada and the Chateau Champlain hotel across from Windsor Station on Peel Street and Place Bonaventure, the city’s first purpose-built convention centre, immediately south of the Central Station complex. These buildings were connected directly not only to the city’s train stations and commuter-rail network, but also to each other and to Montreal’s new Métro system, giving us the very first iteration of our Underground City.

Complexe Desjardins evolved to provide a counter-weight to this development. Whereas the aforementioned buildings were largely financed and driven by the city’s Anglo-American business community, Complexe Desjardins would become the physical manifestation of the ascending Francophone middle-class and Quebec, Inc. By the mid-1960s the Desjardins Group had grown to become one of the nation’s largest financial institutions and was looking for a new head office in downtown Montreal. The Quebec government was also looking for modern downtown office space, and the City of Montreal was keen to ‘pull’ the business centre back towards the east, closer to the seat of municipal power and the traditional ‘centre’ of city affairs.

Finishing touches to Complexe Desjardins, 1976. Dufferin Square had become the parking lot at bottom centre.
Finishing touches to Complexe Desjardins, 1976. Dufferin Square had become the parking lot at bottom centre.

What was created was essentially the opposite of Place Ville Marie. Whereas PVM exploited the aerial rights over a train yard, Complexe Desjardins evolved out of what was once parts of Chinatown and the Red Light District (slum clearance initiatives from the 50s had left the area in near ruin). Consider as well, PVM’s main tower is essentially four skyscrapers gathered around a central service core with its plaza offset, whereas Complexe Desjardins is composed of four separate towers organized on pedestals around a glass-atrium covered plaza. PVM is defined by its tallest tower, a look emphasized by the much smaller buildings gathered around it. Complexe Desjardins’ towers ascend like a staircase – its tallest being just seven floors shorter than PVM 1, and appearing shorter than it actually is. Whereas the former dominates the skyline on high ground, the latter assembly of buildings seems far more balanced, working with one another rather than placed in obvious opposition to each other.

Complexe Desjardins is also, complex (ahem), in terms of what jobs it performs in the context of Montreal’s urban environment. It’s a private commercial property conceived as a public space. The complex forms the central section of Montreal’s eastern institutional axis, beginning with UQAM up at Sherbrooke, then moving through Place des Arts and then on to Complexe Guy-Favreau and the Palais des Congrès & World Trade Centre in Old Montreal.

Integrated, international business services in the west, integrated, local civil services to the east.

Balanced.

We haven’t really built anything like Complexe Desjardins in 40 years, and this isn’t altogether a bad thing, though some insist a lack of construction of this magnitude is a sign of economic weakness. Edifices like Complexe Desjardins come from a specific moment in time responding to the needs of a particular era. That it continues to serve in its intended role, that it has evolved with tastes and maintained its presence and importance within the urban environment is a far better indicator of the project’s success than any attempt at emulation.

The Mordecai Richler Monument to Municipal Illogic

Mordecai Richler 'Pavilion' in Fletcher's Field, Parc Mont-Royal - credit to the National Post
Mordecai Richler ‘Pavilion’ in Fletcher’s Field, Parc Mont-Royal – credit to the National Post

Hat’s off to Bill Brownstein over at the Gazette for shedding some light on the unnecessary civic embarrassment and ode to illogical urban planning that is the saga of the Mordecai Richler Pavilion.

You likely know the ‘pavilion’ as the dilapidated gazebo in Mount Royal Park, pictured above.

How this particular gazebo came to be known as the Mordecai Richler Pavilion is generally presumed to be as a consequence of Richler’s harsh and globally prominent criticism of the Quebec sovereignty movement. Allow me to explain.

It really is a completely random recognition. To my knowledge the gazebo doesn’t feature prominently in his writing, he wasn’t known to frequent it and while it’s a safe bet to assume he likely had once been there and was familiar with the structure, it’s far from being emblematic of the neighbourhood further east he actually grew up in. If anything the gazebo was more a part of the ‘city on the hill’ than of the city below it, and some of Richler’s characters are quite critical of the old money, elitist society Mount Royal Park was largely designed to serve. In sum, naming this particular gazebo after Richler doesn’t make much sense at all.

Naming one of the several small side streets (Groll, Bagg, St-Cuthbert, Clermont, Roy Ouest etc.) that intersect St-Urbain makes far more sense to me, and indeed, this was the first idea, initially championed by Snowdon city councillor Marvin Rotrand several years ago.

In my opinion, naming a street after Richler in an area of town he grew up in is an appropriate way by which to recognize him. That said, at the time this was proposed Rotrand alleges he encountered opposition from the Plateau Mont Royal borough administration. Either they were concerned about potential backlash from hardcore separatists who live in the Plateau or otherwise were themselves of the mind Richler was merely a Quebec-basher who didn’t deserve any recognition at all. There were negotiations – perhaps a pocket park or playground, or more appropriately the Mile End Library – but ultimately nothing came of it. Richler died in 2001.

And so, perhaps the single most influential author this city has ever produced went publicly unacknowledged until about 2012, when Rotrand succeeded in convincing disgraced former mayor Gerald Tremblay to name something – anything – within the mountain domain after Richler. The mayor was in charge of the mountain (perhaps he still is), and the Plateau Mont Royal borough is not. Simple as that. The gazebo must have been chosen because it wasn’t already named and turning it into the ‘Mordecai Richler Pavilion’ would justify the cost of renovating the gazebo.

Great. It may have nothing to do with the man it’s named after, but hey, it will result in a better looking Mount Royal Park, so what’s not to like? Maybe it’ll become something meaningful to Montrealers, a preferred spot to sit and read.

And best of all, because it’s a renovation job it won’t cost as much as building something completely new and further steers clear of the oddly controversial proposal to rename a street, park or library after Richler.

And by the way – on the issue of illogical naming and recognition practices vis-a-vis our public spaces, consider that there is a playground off Clark south of Pine (i.e in the general vicinity of where Richler grew up) that’s actually called Parc University Settlement.

We can’t name this place after Mordecai Richler?

Our city will recognize a university settlement but not one of it’s most accomplished public intellectuals?

In any event, back to the pavilion.

The resolution was passed in 2011 and the gazebo, already in poor shape, was officially named after Richler. Then nothing happened for two years and here we are.

This is the newspeak offered by the city regarding the future of the pavilion:

“The Mordecai Richler Pavilion is an important element of Montreal architecture, one that is part of an area of outstanding heritage value. The administration strives to honour Montrealers who contributed to the vitality of the city.”

I’m not so sure about that first part. It’s an old gazebo that’s managed to survive a lot longer than anyone anticipated but this doesn’t necessarily mean it has any particular architectural value. If I recall correctly, I believe I read once there’s a connection between the gazebo and the nearby Quartier Général of the Montreal fire service. From what I’ve read the gazebo used to be used by brass bands, military and marching bands, back when this was considered genteel summertime entertainment. It’s a far cry from the EDM mini rave that now takes place around the gazebo (though not in it, because it no longer has a floor).

In essence, the gazebo is fundamentally worthless unless the city names it after Richler and spends some money making it into something more substantial than what it currently is. It’s only after the transformation that it will have any tangible cultural or heritage value.

And now… the cost.

Brownstein writes that, so far, fifty-seven thousand dollars (and change) has been spent on an architectural study of the site and a proposal for the new pavilion.

The city has a planning department, so I’m not altogether sure why we need to spend additional money subcontracting architects. What is Beaupré Michaud telling the city it’s own employees can not? What additional information are they bringing to the table with their analysis of the site?

It’s a gazebo.

The city has authorized a budget of 250 thousand dollars for the renovation project which is due to start some time this summer and will be completed by the end of the fall. The question is just what exactly we’re getting for a quarter of a million dollars, over 300 thousand dollars including the architectural study, and what purpose the gazebo will serve.

I’d like to hope for that amount of money we’ll get a lot more than just a renovated gazebo. You’d think the project will include a variety of extras – a drinking fountain, lighting, furniture, garbage and recycling bins, a large square in front of the ‘pavilion’ featuring a statue of Richler and some kind of inscription (in English, quel horreur!) carved into locally-quarried granite, not to mention a proper pathway with its own lighting and a hell of a lot of shrubbery. Oh, and maybe one of those mini libraries featuring beat up Richler paperbacks.

And while I’d love to see such a project realized, it begs the question. Is this really the best use of public funds given our city’s current economic situation?

Renaming a street, library or park doesn’t cost $300K or even $60K and it’s a more appropriate way to recognize the deceased author than randomly attributing dilapidated and antiquated park furniture after him.

And if the city were to go that route instead renovating the gazebo becomes a simpler affair as well. Because it’s disassociated from Richler, it’s suddenly not so significant and doesn’t need to become a pavilion. It can be given a ‘bare bones’ rehabilitation at a fraction of the current proposed budget.

But there’s little hope of all that. The city has made up its mind to create a new public space and has authorized quite a sum to pay for it. All the taxpayers can do now is ask, politely, to see the plans they’ve come up with.