Light Therapy in Quartier des spectacles 2013
Design Competition - Installations for Public Spaces
The Quartier des Spectacles Partnership has announced the two winners of the fourth annual Luminothérapie competition.
The two works will enhance the Quartier des Spectacles experience for visitors and Montrealers from December 11, 2013 to February 2, 2014.
Place des Festivals will be showcased with the metaphorical installation Entre les rangs, designed by a multidisciplinary team led by the KANVA architecture firm. At the same time, the eight building façades in Quartier des Spectacles used for year-round artistic video projections will be lit up throughout the Luminothérapie event by a playful series of projections called Trouve Bob, by the CHAMPAGNE CLUB SANDWICH collective.
Entre les rangs
by Kanva, in collaboration with Udo Design, Côté Jardin, Patrick Watson, Boris Dempsey and Pierre Fournier
Thousands of flexible stems topped with white reflectors make up this large-scale urban metaphor for a wheat field in rural Quebec. The designers were inspired by the shape and arrangement of the province’s lots and rangs, the product of the land surveying system established by the French regime in New France, which still shapes today’s landscape. In the winter wind, bathed in reflected light from the projectors in Place des Festivals, the stylized stalks wave, creating sparking effects like those of wheat swaying in a blustery country field. This nod to Quebec’s roots opens an original dialogue between the province’s agricultural history and its current urban reality. Through the use of symbols, it also makes connections between seasons by transplanting summer bounty into a winter setting, where visitors wander through a timeless space between ages and seasons. Music sources, separated spatially but synchronized, give the impression of moving melodies, like the sound of wind in a wheat field. What’s more, the stalks’ arrangement opens paths punctuated by music sources that invite visitors to take a bucolic multisensory walk in the heart of Montreal.
KANVA
Founded in 2003, Kanva is a multidisciplinary architecture firm that combines architectural design, construction projects and art installations. It approaches every project as an opportunity to tell a story, improve the built environment and broaden the reach of art and architecture. Kanva has won several awards and produced a number of exhibitions (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Grands Prix du design, Jardins de Métis, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Maison de l’architecture du Québec, Société des arts technologiques…).
