A team from the Université de Montréal School of Architecture has been named winner of the 2023 Street Design Challenge, held last October. It met the challenge of leveraging the transformative role of design and tactical urbanism to mitigate the impacts of urban heat islands on a street in Querétaro, Mexico.
The Street Design Challenge is a charrette-inspired international student competition held annually within the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and organized by Querétaro, Mexico, Wuhan, China, and Curitiba, Brazil, all of which are Cities of Design. Some 30 teams from eight Creative Cities, including six teams from Montréal, took part in the most recent iteration of the event. Each team was assigned a street in one of the participating cities that is dealing with the impacts of the heat island effect, the theme of the Challenge. They had 48 hours in which to complete their redevelopment proposal, which was then evaluated by a jury of professionals.
The Montréal teams were paired with the City of Querétaro, which invited them to rethink a stretch of a commercial street near the CETRAM Santa Rosa bus station, on the outskirts of the city. Four of the teams were from the UQAM School of Design, another represented the Université de Montréal School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, and the sixth was made up of students from the Université de Montréal School of Architecture. It was this last team that most impressed the jury, with its proposal titled Escorrentía (Spanish for “runoff”) named the winner of the charrette. Our congratulations to the team made up of students Marianne Benoit, Noémie Lachance, Jennifer Paquette, Justine Sélim and Olivier Sy, who summed up their experience this way:
“It was during our student trip to Brazil last year that our professor, Randy Cohen, sparked our interest in competing in international design charrettes. One of our priorities was to incorporate the local culture, which we really enjoyed discovering, into the project. That led us to choose the Querétaro aqueduct, which is protected by UNESCO World Heritage status, as the main inspiration for our proposal, to attribute an identity-shaping symbol to this site full of potential.”
In addition to local university teams entering the competition, the Montréal borough of Saint-Léonard also took part in the event, devising a challenge for the international teams: to propose a redevelopment plan for a portion of Rue Jean-Talon Est, which is in an area set to undergo major transformations with the upcoming extension of the Montréal métro’s blue line. That challenge was assigned to four teams from Curitiba and seven from Querétaro, two of which received honourable mentions from the jury.
This was the second year in a row that Montréal took part in the Street Design Challenge. In all, 40 students and eight professors from the city were represented at the two editions. A team from the UQAM School of Design was the third-place finisher in the 2022 challenge, the theme of which was biophilic design.
The Bureau du design views this initiative of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as an opportunity for members of the university community to conduct a design exercise in an international context and to help raise the profiles of the talented creators who make Montréal a City of Design. We offer warmest congratulations to all of the students who took part in the latest edition of the Challenge!
The proposals
All 29 proposals from the 2023 edition can be viewed on the Street Design Challenge website. You can also explore the work of the Montréal-based teams via these direct links:
Escorrentía (Winning Proposal)
Team: Marianne Benoit, Noémie Lachance, Jennifer Paquette, Justine Sélim and Olivier Sy
Mentor: Randy Cohen, architect, Atelier Big City, visiting professor, Université de Montréal and lecturer, UQAM
Université de Montréal School of Architecture
Parenthesis: Pause and (re)connect
Team: Claudia André, Élodie Crevier, Éléonore Dubois, Justine Gauthier, Yasmine Lavoie and Joël Potteck
Mentors: Paula Negron-Poblete, professor, and Maude Mailhot-Léonard, lecturer, Université de Montréal and project manager, l'Enclume
Université de Montréal School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture
CETRAM Santa Rosa
Team: Lucas Azar, Florane Bolduc, Romy Craig-Maheu, Paul Kuchembuck-Dardel, Béatrice Poitras and Remy Shepherd
Mentor: Sinisha Brdar, professor
UQAM School of Design
CETRAM Santa Rosa: Collective connectiveness
Team: Joachim Audy, Gabriel Belisle, Gabrielle Jean-Grenier, Maël Renard and Émile Whittom-Houde
Mentor: Sinisha Brdar, professor
UQAM School of Design
CETRAM Santa Rosa
Team: Geneviève Asselin, Isac Lefebvre, Imane Lktiri and Manal Tachfine
Mentor: Mikael St-Pierre, lecturer
UQAM School of Design
La plaza de las oportunidades: A social solution through green philosophy
Team: Maëlann Bleau, Eloise Guimoyas, Éléonore Mailloux and Imène Mazri
Mentor: Sinisha Brdar, professor
UQAM School of Design
