Redesigning of the area around Champ-de-Mars metro station

National Ideas Competition

Il faudra me passer sur le corps - Planches (détail)

Il faudra me passer sur le corps
Annie Breton, Frédérick Boily, Master’s in Architecture students, Université de Montréal
Student category

Winner

“Champs-de-Mars eschews daily use because its environment of paved surfaces, roads, and huge buildings in the distance surpasses the human scale. The only point of reference for the stray person seeking something to do is the métro station, from which one emerges into the din of traffic and the incessant flow of light whose scale and intensity is overwhelming. To rethink this space and make it attractive to pedestrians, we must turn it upside down: give the machine trench over to pedestrians; let the human body retake its rightful place in the city.”
(Excerpt from proposal) 

“The jury was impressed by the relationship to the human body evoked in all aspects of the proposal. It speaks to a new type of city and a new way of inhabiting it. The tube-walkways, positioned randomly above the expressway trenches, consist of a “bone structure” covered in a flexible wall, partially folded inward, that suggests skin. The need for a private relationship to urban space, a response to the aggressivity of the city, is obvious. Members appreciated the quality and human scale of the tunnel objects.”
(Excerpt from jury report)


Download the project's boards