Temporary and transitional design for public spaces

In the spring of 2020 and the months that followed, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted cities to revisit planning and occupancy of public spaces as well as the role of retail spaces and local service providers on the neighbourhood scale. This demanded creative and innovative solutions to address the public-health restrictions implemented. Many Ville de Montréal boroughs and departments looked to temporary and/or transitional strategies to fulfil residents’ needs, including pedestrianization of commercial streets, implementation of public urban terrasse spaces, and design of other systems to make those spaces more walkable and enliven them.

Again this year, the capacity to frame friendly, attractive and safe living spaces across the entire city is a key challenge for ensuring our public health as well as our social, economic and cultural vitality. The next few months will see many projects implemented to reshape public spaces for the coming summer season. The Ville de Montréal is facilitating participation by designers and multidisciplinary teams in these projects, with a view to planning and implementing sustainable, innovative and high-quality actions on sites.

The pool of multidisciplinary design teams established at the conclusion of this request for qualification will be made available to the boroughs and departments as well as selected partners of the Ville de Montréal so that they can receive support and guidance in designing and implementing such projects. Depending on the project, contracts awarded may cover provision of professional services (design) or turnkey services (design-build).

This request is part of the Ville de Montréal’s fulfilment of the commitments it made in adopting the Montréal 2030 Agenda for Quality and Exemplarity in Design and Architecture, namely, to draw on the creativity and innovative strength of Montréal-based designers and architects, make them allies in ensuring the quality and resilience of our living environments, and help them contribute to the economic recovery of Montréal, a UNESCO City of Design.

This request is aimed at pre-qualifying multidisciplinary teams, which may be composed of one or more entities (companies, sole proprietors [self-employed workers], non-profit organizations, co-operatives, associations, etc.) that together meet the criteria set out below. 

1. Each entity of a team must be established (have an address) on the territory of the Ville de Montréal. 
2. The team must possess and demonstrate, without being limited to, experience and capabilities in the following disciplines, fields of practice and areas of expertise: urban design, transitional or temporary urban design, and street furniture design. Expertise in the following is an asset: landscape architecture, event design, service design, graphic design, industrial design, signage/wayfinding. (Construction/production expertise will also be required for design-build contracts; it is optional for this request but is also an asset.)
3. The team must have completed at least three temporary or transitional public-space development projects with a certain degree of complexity and that involved the disciplines, fields of practice and area of expertise listed in the previous point.
4. Each team must appoint one co-ordinator who has at least five years of experience in management of design projects and in staff co-ordination.
5. An individual entity may not be part of more than one team.
6. Each entity must be registered on the Ville de Montréal’s list of suppliers.

Teams interested in becoming candidates must complete the online application form (in French) and append a team presentation document (in the form of a single PDF file) as described below. 

The deadline for submitting applications is midnight on Monday, March 8, 2021.

The team presentation document must contain the following: 

• General presentation of the team (max. 2 pages)
  Provide a brief overview of the team’s composition (identify each entity and its associated disciplines, fields of practice and areas of expertise) along with its approach to the design of temporary and transitional public spaces.
• Qualifications and experience of the co-ordinator (max. 1 page)
  Provide a profile of the team co-ordinator, demonstrating their experience of at least five years in management of design projects and in staff coordination.
• Relevant past projects (3 to 5 projects; max. 1 page per project)
  Provide details of between three and five projects that involved transitional or temporary public-space design, completed by the team or part of the team, demonstrating its capacity for innovation and ability to execute this type of mandate. Projects presented should involve a certain degree of complexity and illustrate the disciplines, fields of practice and area of expertise covered by this request for qualification. Include, for each project: a brief description, one or more photos of the completed work, year completed, production budget, nature of the contract (design services or design-build services), the role of the team or team-member entity in the mandate, the name of the client). 

An evaluation committee will review the applications and select the qualified teams based on the criteria in this request. All teams that submit applications will be notified of the results of the qualification process no later than the week of March 22, 2021.

For eventual projects or mandates, the method of selecting teams from the pool of qualified teams may vary depending on the nature and scope of the mandate and/or contract. The selection process may include interviews.

Qualification will be valid until the end of the year 2021.

Please direct any questions with regard to this request for qualification to the Bureau du design at @email.