The Chair in Landscape and Environmental Design at University of Montreal (CPEUM) is launching an international urban design ideas competition for the gateway corridor linking Montreal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL) to its downtown area (MTL) along Autoroute 20.
The CPEUM has been commissioned by the Ministère des Transports du Québec to coordinate the competition and the underlying collaborative planning process bringing together the main public and private actors responsible for this territory. The 17 km gateway corridor, which is mostly made up of transport infrastructures and brownfields, is witnessing a large number of development infrastructural projects, thus offering considerable urban innovation potential.
The International Ideas Competition wants to seize this re-qualification opportunity to propose planning options to structure a coherent vision aiming at creating an expressive gateway based on Montreal's identity as a UNESCO City of Design, a designation of which Montreal is celebrating the 5th anniversary in 2011.
The proposals should revolve along three work streams:
- An evolving and emblematic landscape project for the metropolitan area
- A scenographic composition of the corridor experiences
- A collaborative approach to sustainable urban development
To attain this goal, contestants should reflect on design elements as much for the corridor as for the adjacent areas. The resulting vision will offer coherent guidelines for the different interventions to come by ensuring a better-balanced interaction between transport infrastructures and the adjacent living environments.
This ideas competition is:
- a urban design competition;
- international in scope;
- anonymous;
- without registration fees;
- opened to planning and design professionals alike;
- held in one stage: the jury will select up to tree winners.
At the end of the competition, laureates will be invited on November 20th and 21st to present their ideas at the Montréal 2011 Workshop_atelier/terrain (WAT), an international design workshop that will further explore the gateway corridor potentials. This workshop is organised by the UNESCO Chair in Landscape and Environmental Design at the University of Montreal. During this visit, laureates will also present their proposal within work-groups with the public stakeholders.
A total of $100,000 CAN will be awarded to and shared between 3 laureates.
To be eligible, each contestant must designate a professional representative (architect, landscape architect, urban designer, urban planner). The representative will act as an official contact and coordinator for the duration of the competition.
Contestants are encouraged to establish multidisciplinary partnerships with other professionals such as engineers, transport and mobility consultants, environmental specialists, visual artists, set designers, graphic designers.
Entries will be evaluated by an international jury:
- Bernardo Secchi, architect and urban planner - Chair of the jury
- Pierre Bélanger, associate professor in landscape architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge
- Ken Greenberg, architect and urban designer, Greenberg consultants inc., Toronto
- Florence Junca-Adenot, founder of the Forum Urba 2015, Université du Québec à Montréal
- Anick La Bissonnière, architect and scenic designer, Atelier Labi, Montréal
- Maroun Shaneen, representative of the ministère des Transports du Québec
To register, each contestant must fill out an electronic entry form before 17h00 (EDT), on August 26, 2011. Only those duly registered will receive the competition's official documents.
Proposals must be electronically handed in before 17h00 (EDT), on October 7, 2011. The required information for submission will be sent with the registration confirmation email.
Patrick Marmen, research officer at the CPEUM, will act as the competition's professional advisor. He is supported in this task by Jacques White, architect and architectural competitions advisor.
Any questions regarding the competition should be forwarded to the following email address: @email
