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Ugliest building
un sujet a posté ProposMontréal dans Urbanisme, architecture et technologies urbaines
Source: Taylor Noakes Je ne suis pas souvent d'accord avec ce type, mais ce billet est intéressant. Cliquez le lien pour y voir les photos nécessaire pour bien comprendre l'article. Came across an interesting conversation on Montreal City Weblog that started out about a bit of news that the Hilton Bonaventure is up for sale but ended up on the subject of some of our city’s ugliest buildings. The question was whether the entirety of Place Bonaventure was on the block or just the Hotel (and what the Hotel’s stake in the building was, by extension), and one commentator stated he’d prefer to see the building destroyed and replaced with a ‘proper European-styled train station, a worthy Southern Entrance to the city’ (I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist of it). Ultimately it is just the hotel that is for sale. Of note, the Delta Centre-Ville (another building I have mixed feelings about) recently announced it is closing in October, putting some 350 people out of work. The University Street building, co-located with the Tour de la Bourse is to be converted into – get this – high-end student housing. I don’t know if the rotating restaurant on the upper floors is still operational, but I’m going to find out. I can imagine a high-priced and slightly nauseating meal with a fantastic if intermittent view awaits… The Hilton Bonaventure occupies the top floors of Place Bonaventure, a building designed from the inside-out that was originally conceived as an international trade centre and convention space. When opened in 1967 it boasted an immense convention hall, five floors of international wholesalers, two floors of retail shopping, a collection of international trade mission head offices and the aforementioned hotel. The building was heavily modified in 1998, losing its wholesale and retail shopping component as it was converted into office space. The exterior is in the brutalist style of poured, ribbed concrete, some of which has cracked and fallen off. Though an architecturally significant building, it’s far from a beauty. The rooftop hotel is perhaps the building’s best feature, involving a sumptuous interior aesthetic heavy on earth tones interacting with plenty of natural sunlight, bathing the hotel’s multiple levels while simultaneously exposing the well-cultivated rooftop garden and pool. In any event, the discussion on Montreal City Weblog brought up general disinterest in Place Bonaventure’s looks, but commentators had other ideas about what they considered to be our city’s truly ugliest building. Montreal Forum, circa 1996. Montreal Forum, circa 1996. Weblog curator Kate McDonnell’s pick is the Cineplex Pepsi AMC Forum Entertainment Complex Extravaganza (brought to you by Jonathan Wener at Canderel Realty). I won’t disgrace the pages of this blog by showing you what it looks like – just go take a waltz around Ste-Catherine’s and Atwater and when you start dry heaving you’ll know you’re looking at one of the worst architectural abominations to ever befall a self-respecting society. The above image is what the Forum looked like pre-conversion, probably shortly after the Habs moved to the Bell Centre (formerly the Molson Centre, formerly General Dynamics Land Systems Place). This would’ve been the Forum’s second or third makeover since it was first built in the 1920s, and as you can see, a strong local Modernist vibe with just a touch of the playful in the inter-lacing escalators deigned to look like crossed hockey sticks is pretty much all there is to it. Simple, straightforward, even a touch serious – a building that looked like the ‘most storied building in hockey history’. But today – yea gods. Frankly I’m surprised we haven’t formed a mob to arson it all the way back to hell, where the current incarnation of the Montreal Forum aptly belongs. From what I’ve heard Satan needs a multiplex on which to show nothing but Ishtar. All that aside, I agree that the Forum is awfully ugly, but it’s not my choice for ugliest city-wide. Other suggestions from the conversation included the Port Royal Apartments on Sherbrooke and the National Bank Building on Place d’Armes, though commentators seemed to agree this was mostly because they felt the building was out of place, and rendered ugly more by the context of its surroundings, or its imposition upon them, than anything else. The Big O was mentioned, as was Concordia’s ice-cube tray styled Hall Building. La Cité was brought up as an ultimately failed project that disrupts a more cohesive human-scale neighbourhood, and so were some of McGill’s mid-1970s pavilions. Surprisingly, the Chateau Champlain wasn’t brought up, though I’ve heard many disparage it as nothing but a fanciful cheese-grater. 1200 McGill College - Centre Capitol 1200 McGill College – Centre Capitol But after all that is said and done, I’m not convinced we’ve found Montreal’s ugliest building. My personal choice is 1200 McGill College, the building above, a drab and dreary brown brick and smoked glass office tower of no particular architectural merit or patrimonial value that I personally believe is ugly by virtue of marring the beauty of the buildings around it, notably Place Ville Marie and just about everything else on McGill College. Worse still, it replaced what was once a grand theatre – the Capitol – with something that would ultimately become a large Roger’s call centre. Ick. However much corporate office real estate our city happens to have, we could all do without whatever this puny out-of-style building provides. Suffice it to say, I would gladly sell tickets to its implosion. But in writing this article I remembered a building even more hideous and out of place than 1200 McGill College: This monstrosity… Avis Parking Garage on Dorchester Square - credit to Spacing Montreal Avis Parking Garage on Dorchester Square – credit to Spacing Montreal There is simply no excuse for a multi-level parking garage conceived in such ostentatiously poor taste to occupy such a prime piece of real estate as this, and so I can only infer that the proprietor is either making a killing in the parking game or, that the proprietor is waiting to try and get building height restrictions relaxed. It’d be a great spot for a tony condo complex, but given that it’s wedged between the iconic Sun Life and Dominion Square buildings it’s likely the lot has some significant zoning restrictions, making a tower – the only really viable residential model given the size of the plot – highly unlikely. I can’t imagine a tower on this spot would do anything but take away from the already hyper precise proportions of the square. Personally, I think the spot would be ideal for a medium-sized venue, especially considering it’s adjacent to the preserved former Loews Theatre, currently occupied by the Mansfield Athletic Association. In better days the city might have the means to redevelop the former Loews into a new performance venue; a gym can go anywhere, an authentic turn of the century vaudeville-styled theatre is a precious commodity these days. Think about it – a medium-sized theatre and performance complex in the middle of a pre-existing entertainment and retail shopping district. I think that might work here. Either way – boo on this parking lot. And come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind seeing just about every single modernist apartment tower built in the McGill and Concordia ghettoes in the 1960s and 1970s removed from the skyline as well. But I leave it to you – what do you think is the single ugliest building in Montreal? Feel free to send pics if you have them. -
In Montreal, delicate design gestures help us forget the big scandals
un sujet a posté ProposMontréal dans L'actualité
Du Globe and Mail In Montreal, delicate design gestures help us forget the big scandals By day and by night, there are adults flying through the air at Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles on oversize, colourful swings. Streams of cyclists whip by on dedicated bike paths. Warmed by the spring sunshine, students and gallerygoers lounge on the steps at Place des Arts, where the joys of museum, opera and symphony are recognized with fortissimo. It would seem that everything is just as it should be in Montreal, where bonhomie thrives and an art has been made of small-scale urban architecture. In the leafy neighbourhood of Saint-Louis, where many artists have made their homes, the ghost of architect Luc Laporte lives on. From an 1880s commercial building on Rue St. Denis, he punched a generous, rounded arch through the masonry to connect his instant landmark bistro directly to the street; rather than depending on loud signage, he preferred to emphasize the building as sign. L’Express is a classic, with a heated, black-and-white tiled front terrace, still beloved – still packed – 33 years after he designed it. But the sweetness of the small architectural intervention is sadly being offset these days by the weight of large public works gone wrong. The corruption charges levelled against Montreal politicians have contaminated the reputation of the venerable metropolis. Last October, the city froze all non-essential public-works projects following widespread allegations of impropriety. With more arrests being made and former mayor Gérald Tremblay now ousted from office, it’s as if a slick of toxic oil is creeping along the streets, darkening the large civic projects touched by city builders and the SNC-Lavalin engineering firm. The Montreal-based global entity had its tentacles in many of the big public-sector works in the city, including the Maison Symphonique, with its handsome wood-lined concert hall but bargain-basement public lobbies; the shiny new planetarium on the eastern edge of the city; and the still-incomplete McGill University Health Centre hospital, a massive behemoth, estimated to cost $2.35-billion, and as ugly as its multilevel parking garage. It’s impossible to travel through these facilities without contemplating what troubling scenarios might have gone on. For now, then, it’s the modest, meaningful works of architecture and joyous pop-up landscapes that are left standing with integrity fully intact. Like the fans of L’Express, Montrealers are right to turn to them as places that citizens can depend on. In the open, and often under the open sky, is where the healing can begin. When, during last weekend’s Portes Ouvertes, I walked the city’s streets touring dozens of young architecture firms and funky design studios in former textile warehouses, the joy of their public-space work was intoxicating. Wanted, a two-person landscape-architecture firm, finds its motivation in the power of design to effect social change – or simply to contribute more urban comfort and delight. Last summer on Victoria Street, next to the McCord Museum of Canadian History, Paula Meijerink and Thierry Beaudoin installed an urban forest of cushy carpets of purple turf, artificial palm pavilions and curvey benches. People lounged with friends; couples posed among the outlandish neon set piece for their wedding pictures. This month, alongside the McCord, Wanted installs a temporary urban forest – ash trees with their root balls in massive sacks. Further east at Quartier des Spectacles, the colourful swings, suspended from white steel box frames, have been custom-designed by a six-person studio called Daily tous les jours. Back by popular demand for a third summer, 21 Balançoires (check out the video at vimeo.com/40980676), notes studio principal Mouna Andraos, comes complete with a musical score: The more people swing, the more intricate the melody becomes. The studio has also produced massive sing-a-longs at fairgrounds outside of Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Dallas, offering large microphones and Auto-Tune to evoke decent collective sound. An installation of projections and sound that they hope will inspire audiences to move like the stars or the Earth is being prepared by Daily tous les jours for the $48-million planetarium. The planetarium’s design features rounded, wood-clad cinemas that push out on the upper levels as aluminum-clad cononical shapes between slanted green roofs. Designed by the city’s competition-winning Cardin Ramirez Julien & Aedifica, with, among other consultants, SNC-Lavalin, the three-level building will help anchor the Olympic grounds. “It’s definitely a shame, the huge problem the city has,” says Andraos, referring to the corruption scandals. “We’re hoping that some of the projects that we do can create exchanges for people in public spaces, and spark a sense of ownership.” In the Plateau district, a group of us – including journalists from international design media; Marie-Josée Lacroix, director of Montreal’s Bureau du design; and Élaine Ayotte, a member of the city’s newly formed executive committee responsible for culture and design – are led on a tour that begins by paying design homage to Laporte, who died in 2012. Heritage advisor Nancy Dunton leads our group to a stunning row of grey limestone townhouses fronting onto genteel Saint-Louis Square. Distinctive black steel railings and simple stone stairs on the Victorian exteriors are the work of Laporte, a man variously described as a bon vivant and a curmudgeon, who was often given commissions by local residents who knew him well. We file into Laporte’s still-functioning live-work studio: At the front, an efficient bar/kitchen – designed with the rigour of a boat’s cabin, complete with built-in cabinets and espresso-maker – sits alongside a work table with shelves lined with historic architecture books. An old photo of the staff at L’Express is propped on the white tile floor. Toward the back of the long, narrow space, Laporte had renovated a horse stable to become his studio, and, past delicate glass doors, a small terrace where vines grow up a brick wall. It was from here that he designed many of Montreal’s most enduring bars and restos, including the elegant Laloux (1980) with its seamless black-steel front entrance and cream-coloured walls of black-framed mirrors; and the high-end housewares boutique Arthur Quentin (1975) with walls and ceiling lined and strapped in plywood. Human-scaled and warm to the touch, these are the places that never stop giving back. They continue to amuse and endure in ways very different from those who choose to become their city‘s laughing stock. -
ANDRÉ DUBUC La Presse Bien qu'elle ait fêté ses 50 ans l'an dernier, la Place Ville-Marie (PVM) demeure une adresse recherchée pour tout locataire d'envergure à Montréal, selon un vétéran de l'industrie du courtage immobilier. «La Place Ville-Marie, c'est un des édifices extraordinaires dans tout le Canada, dit Stephen Léopold, président et fondateur de Léopold Montréal immobilier. C'est une adresse internationale. C'est l'adresse internationale à Montréal, comme le Rockfeller Center l'est à New York.» On a appris, au début de la semaine, que le copropriétaire de la Place Ville-Marie AIMCO, caisse de retraite de l'Alberta, souhaitait se départir de la participation de 50% qu'elle possède dans la tour cruciforme. La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, par l'entremise de sa filiale immobilière Ivanhoé Cambridge, détient l'autre tranche de 50%. Dans ce genre de partenariat immobilier, il est fréquent qu'un droit de premier refus soit accordé au partenaire en cas de vente. Ivanhoé Cambridge n'a pas voulu confirmer si c'était le cas. Le statut de la Place Ville-Marie dans le marché des adresses de bureaux de prestige est menacé avec la construction de tours arborant des certifications écoénergétiques comme LEED. «À New York, les quatre édifices qui se louent parmi les plus chers ont plus d'un demi-siècle en âge», fait remarquer M. Léopold, qui a travaillé longtemps dans la Grosse Pomme. Il nomme les GM Building, 9 West 57th, le Seagram Building et le Lever House. «Est-ce que ces édifices sont les plus modernes? Au contraire, répond-il. Parfois, il existe des attributs qui méritent d'être conservés, comme le système de lumières du Seagram Building, construit en 1958. C'est un édifice classé historique.» «Pourquoi ces édifices commandent-ils des loyers parmi les plus élevés de New York? Parce qu'ils parlent de New York. La Place Ville-Marie vieillit, tout comme le Rockfeller Center qui a été construit en 1932.» Quoi qu'il en soit, entre le patrimoine et la modernité, les comptables Deloitte ont choisi la seconde et déménageront dans la nouvelle tour de bureaux de Cadillac Fairview, à proximité de l'amphithéâtre du Canadien. De son côté, le transporteur ferroviaire Via a choisi de rester au 3, Place Ville-Marie, en renouvelant son bail en janvier 2013. Selon un rapport de marché de l'agence de courtage Colliers, PVM n'a pas encore trouvé de remplaçant pour Deloitte et doit en plus relouer les locaux que la Banque Royale prévoit libérer au quatrième trimestre. Par ailleurs, la Caisse continue ses achats dans les immeubles locatifs. Avec des partenaires, elle a acquis 8000 logements dans 27 immeubles, un portefeuille de 1,5 milliard de dollars. Elle a aussi vendu quatre hôtels à Paris, conformément à sa politique de se retirer du secteur hôtelier, à l'exception de quelques établissements à Montréal et à Québec. L'édifice Sun Life, 1155, rue Metcalfe Place Ville-Marie, 1-5, Place Ville-Marie Le 1000 de la Gauchetière, 1000, rue De La Gauchetière Ouest L'édifice de la Caisse de dépôt, le 1000, place Jean-Paul Riopelle La galerie marchande de la Place Montréal Trust, 1500, avenue McGill College Centre de commerce mondial Le complexe Les Ailes de la Mode L'hôtel Fairmont Le Reine Elizabeth
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Just wondering if anyone has pictures of the recladding+expansion that took place in over the years? (here's an interesting article about the most recent modifications) That building went from: to this: -
Concordia GM Building Début de construction: March 2011 Fin de construction: May 2012 Final rendering:
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MONTREAL - When James Essaris looks out over his flat concrete kingdom of 20 downtown parking lots that he started collecting in 1956, he sees a precious urban resource where others see ugliness. The much-maligned parking lot, long considered an urban eyesore and enemy of public transit, is becoming an increasingly rare feature on the downtown streetscape. Essaris, longtime owner of Stationnement Métropolitain, sees his barren concrete as more than just a chance for him to pocket some cash on the barrelhead: he believes in the good that parking lots do and considers the spaces to be the lungs of downtown commerce. “The City of Montreal should give free parking to come downtown. We’re chasing people out to the shopping centres,” he said. The new parking lot tax was adopted in 2010 and brings in $19 million a year to fund public transit. The tax is determined by a complicated formula that Essaris says in practice makes city taxes about twice as expensive on a surface lot as it would for another type of structure. The city held public hearings on the issue this spring and response to the surface parking eradication campaign — through the new parking tax and allowing larger-scale buildings on the empty lots — was greeted positively, according to City of Montreal Executive Committee member Alan DeSousa. “It brings more money into the city coffers and removes the scars in the downtown area,” he said. He said that some of lost parking spaces have been replaced by indoor parking in the various projects. But after seeing his taxes double in recent years, Essaris is now doing what many other parking-lot owners have done: He has started sacrificing his supply of parking spaces for housing, most recently building a 38-storey Icône condo tower at de la Montagne St. and René Lévesque Blvd. He has some misgivings, however, knowing that those spots will be sorely missed. “We cannot survive without parking in the city. I wish everybody could take the bus and métro, it’d make things easier, but you cannot force people onto the métro when they have a car,” he said. Urban retailers have long begged their merchants associations to create more places to park, perhaps no more than on the Main where about half of all members regularly plead for more parking, according to Bruno Ricciardi-Rigault, president of the SDBSL. “It would be really nice if we had a few more parking lots,” he said. However, the dearth of spaces is only going to intensify as the few remaining parking lots near St. Laurent Blvd. are slated to be redeveloped. Ricciardi-Rigault is bracing for more complaints from restauranteurs who have lost customers because their motorist clientele was fed up with circling the block. “Some people want to spend the whole afternoon, shop, go to Jeanne Mance Park, come back for a beer. Paying $20 to park on the street, that‘s asking a lot,” he said. Condo towers have been replacing lots in the downtown core at an impressive pace and the result is higher prices at indoor garages, reflected in a recent Colliers study that ranks Montreal as having the second-highest parking prices of any big Canadian city. Rates have risen an eye-opening 11 per cent since last year, as the average monthly price for an unreserved spot in a downtown underground commercial lot was $330.96 — $88 above the national average. The proliferation of private parking lots once inspired many to liken Montreal to a bombed-out city, but that is no longer the case. “We were spoiled by having tons of parking lots, now Montrealers will have to get used to much higher parking costs,” said Colliers representative Andrew Maravita. He credits a lower commercial vacancy rate for pushing prices higher. Up until the 1960s, Montreal tacitly allowed even historic buildings to be demolished and replaced by parking lots and until recently turned a blind eye to the countless rogue illegal lots that dotted the downtown core. For ages, Montreal surface parking lots were fly-by-night operations, changing ownership to avoid bylaw restrictions ordering them to be paved, landscaped. The city always said they couldn’t chase every owner down. But in recent years, authorities have increased taxes and cracked down on illegal lots, combining the stick of punishment with the carrot of juicy rezoning booty. In the past, many property owners failed to see the point of building on their parking lots, as the zoning frequently only allowed for small buildings. Those restrictions have been lifted on many of those properties, resulting in a bonanza for parking-lot owners whose land increased in value. The strategy was put into place with input from architect and former Equality Party leader Robert Libman, who previously served on the city’s Executive Committee. “A lot of projects going on now, on streets like Crescent and Bishop and that area, were previously zoned for two or three storeys. The urban plan capped those at a minimal height. The rezoning has made it more alluring for owners to build instead of leaving it vacant,” he says. Libman’s war against above-ground parking lots is personal. “They’re ugly and they undermine the downtown urban fabric,” Libman said. But he concedes that commerce relies on people being able to drive to a business. “You’ve got to find that careful balance between offering too much parking, making it too easy vs. your objective of discouraging people to take their car downtown and using public transit, that’s the fine line you have to find between the two,” he said. Developers are required to include parking in new projects, but the amount varies from place to place. In Laval, many projects are required to have two parking spaces per condo unit, while in the Plateau it’s close to zero spaces, although a typical recipe calls for one spot per two units. The one part of the city perhaps most challenged by a dearth of parking facilities is the booming Old Montreal area. The issue has long been considered such an urgent problem that one proposal from a decade ago even suggested that the massive silos in the Old Port be used to park cars. More recently, Old Montreal planners have installed an electronic billboard indicating where spaces could be found, but the pressure on parking endures, according to Georges Coulombe, whose real-estate company has been snapping up properties in the area for the last four decades. Coulombe concedes that area commerce has been hurt by a lack of space for cars. “People from places like Longueuil want to come shop on the weekend, but they can’t do it anymore, it’s too expensive to park, they end up going to malls closer to home.” He attempted to address the problem through a plan to build a high-tech robotic parking facility that could accommodate twice as many cars as a regular indoor lot. However, he did the math and found that it wouldn’t make sense because of city taxes. “I had a small 3,000-foot terrain that I would have turned into 300 spaces, but the city wanted to tax not just the building but the machinery inside. It made it impossible.” Much-hyped futuristic robotic parking systems are seen by some as a potential solution to parking woes and have actually been around for quite some time. The city has had at least three pigeon-hole parking systems as the earlier incarnations were known; one was opened on de la Montagne St. in the 1950s and another on Mansfield, where a worker was crushed by an elevator. A third more recent one was in operation at St. Jean and Notre Dame until a decade ago. Authorities frequently cite the fear of being unable to put out a car blaze in their opposition to such facilities. And although a few such high-tech robotic lots could elegantly alleviate parking pressures, one expert says that the standalone dedicated parking buildings will probably never get built. Chris Mulvihill, the New Jersey-based President of Boomerang Systems, a high-tech car-stacking parking lot system, notes that any landowner would most probably opt for a different sort of project. “Take any place where it’s very hard to get a parking spot,” Mulvihill says. “You’d think building a garage and charging for parking would be a good business model, but the economics dictate that if there’s a high demand for parking in that area, it’s because it’s a hot, happening place, so there are real-estate developers who want to build on that land. The demand makes it uber-expensive. A landowner could make a lot more money doing something other than parking on it.” © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Parking+squeeze+Downtown+businesses+feeling/7453989/story.html#ixzz2ASqBCwJE
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Je suis passé la semaine dernière et j'ai parlé avec le vendeur et j'ai vu la présentation des unités sur un espèce d'écran 3D du building (trop cool) et effectivement, environ la moitié du building était en rouge, donc vendues (surtout du côté Nord, là ou la vue ne sera pas bloquée par le Roccabelle, Avenue des Canadiens etc..). Il m'a dit que la construction devrait débuter en mars et prendre environ 1 an et demi pour les fondations, et ensuite, un étage par semaine pour le reste. Il m'a également dit que la 2e tour était pour du commercial seulement. De plus, il m'a dit qu'un projet de condo de 30 étages allait bientôt être annoncé dans le parking au Nord de la 1ere tour (juste à l'ouest des tours Samcon) et que donc, des clients ayant acheté du côté Nord de la tour pour avoir une vue, allait finalement la perdre. Chose certaine, selon le vendeur, les choses vont très bien pour ce projet, mais c'est un vendeur ;-) Site actuel : https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Piazza+G.+Agnelli,+10,+rome&hl=fr&ll=45.497407,-73.574034&spn=0.000004,0.002401&sll=41.899023,12.479805&sspn=0.050661,0.076818&t=h&gl=ca&hnear=Via+Virginia+Agnelli,+10,+Roma,+Lazio,+Italie&z=19&layer=c&cbll=45.497407,-73.574034&panoid=B3_Kr9HGDNb7csz6J0EmuQ&cbp=12,37.92,,0,3.42
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Travel and Leisure
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L'édifice qui abrite le Siège Social de CGI à subit un recladding/coup de peinture récemment + changement des fenêtres, le building est maintenant d'une couleur plus pâle qu'auparavant (Gris/Beige plutot que Brun)
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En 2011m, il y a eu un désencrassage majeur pour cet édifice de McGill. Nous n'avions pas de fil sur le sujet. Avant : Après :
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And... Yet another condo project in the Sud-Ouest borough of Montreal. Nice old building... Name: La Machinerie - http://lamachinerie.ca/ Location: 3601 Rue Saint-Jacques - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Montreal,+QC,+Canada&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=45.480793,-73.582794&spn=0.000982,0.002226&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.042042,72.949219&oq=montrea&hnear=Montreal,+Communaut%C3%A9-Urbaine-de-Montr%C3%A9al,+Quebec,+Canada&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=45.480794,-73.583303&panoid=2bdUgkr56bVw5yuN9cb0nA&cbp=12,332.54,,0,-18.51
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Musée Stewart du Fort de l'Île Ste-Hélène, réaménagement (2011)
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans Complétés
Stewart Museum shuts for $4.5-million refit To reopen in 2010; military drills continue The Gazette Published: 9 hours ago The Stewart Museum in the Old Fort on Île Ste. Hélène has closed for 18 months for a $4.5-million renovation program. The museum, which attracts about 60,000 visitors a year, is housed in a 188-year-old building that needs to be upgraded to meet 21st-century standards. "It means bringing the building up to scratch," said Bruce Bolton, executive director of the Macdonald Stewart Foundation, which rents the facility from the city. The work will include the installation of elevators, new windows and a sprinkler system. Another $500,000 will be spent to refurbish the permanent collection of artifacts, which hasn't been touched since 1992. The city has leased the property to the Macdonald Stewart Foundation since 1963 for use as a military and maritime museum. In 1985 it became the Macdonald Stewart Museum, and in the '90s became simply the Stewart Museum in the Old Fort. The museum is expected to re-open in May 2010. When it does, it will offer a revised educational program of activities. "In the past we offered quite a few group activities, perhaps too many, so we plan to clean up the act," said Sylvia Neider Deschênes, the museum's communications chief. The museum will be closed, but the military drills in the parade square will continue. "We will not touch the two ceremonial military regiments, the Compagnie franche de la Marine and the 78th Fraser Highlanders," Neider Deschênes said. "That's one program that sets us apart from other museums. We're adamant about keeping them. All the military animation programs will run next summer." -
How a Montreal company won the race to build the world's cheapest tablet
un sujet a posté Habfanman dans L'actualité
IAIN MARLOW From Friday's Globe and Mail Published Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011 6:40PM EST Last updated Monday, Jan. 02, 2012 12:32PM EST http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/how-a-montreal-company-won-the-race-to-build-the-worlds-cheapest-tablet/article2282337/ Fantastic story! [...] "Datawind’s main office is located in a bland concrete tower block on René-Lévesque Ouest in downtown Montreal. There’s no sign of the company in the building lobby. The only indication of Datawind’s presence is a white sheet of paper taped to an 11th-floor door that reads, “Datawind Net Access Corporation.” Even that had only been posted for the benefit of a visitor. Behind the door, around 50 of the company’s 150 employees—many of them engineers—toil and tinker with motherboards and mobile operating systems. Datawind was founded in 2000 by Suneet and his brother, Raja, who is two years his senior and holds the title of chief technology officer. The pair have had modest success building and selling wireless devices like the PocketSurfer (a small, clamshell mobile device) and the UbiSurfer (a mini-netbook), mainly in the United Kingdom for use on Vodafone Group’s network. The company has an office in London, and another in Amritsar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, where it operates a call centre and handles some engineering, testing, accounting and HR duties. Although Suneet and his brother are Canadian citizens—born in India, they arrived when they were 12 and 14, respectively—Datawind is registered in the U.K. Suneet says this is largely because of Canada’s notoriously conservative venture capital market, the U.K.’s funding support for innovation and the fact that Canada’s wireless industry—dominated by just three companies—has had little incentive to supplement its own high-margin smartphones with the kinds of inexpensive Internet devices Datawind designs." [...] "Behind the paper sign on the door, and down a hallway lined with overflowing cardboard boxes, Datawind’s Montreal headquarters becomes a dizzying blur of after-hours engineering. It is the kind of scene more common to bootstrapping Silicon Valley start-ups than a decade-old company run by a pair of seasoned entrepreneurs who have already listed two companies on the NASDAQ. Technicians like Cezar Oprescu, a heavy-set Romanian who not only wears two collared shirts but two pairs of glasses at the same time (they double as a microscope), work in rotating shifts, some lasting more than 36 hours, at desks littered with soldering irons, spare computer parts, discarded motherboards and fast food wrappers. Their monitors flicker with the drip of neon green code that looks like something from The Matrix. While one staff member, seated at an impossibly cluttered desk, sets about re-engineering the piece of hardware responsible for receiving WiFi signals, a colleague, stationed just a few feet away, adjusts the software drivers that will interact with it. Elsewhere, programmers are still testing the code that dictates how the touchscreen user interface deals with the drivers. The pace is unrelenting. Not only are employees ordering in dinner, they’re ordering in breakfast, grappling in real time with the allergies and dietary restrictions of an incredibly diverse staff of Eastern Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Russians and French Canadians, several vegetarians and one person who is allergic to green peppers." [...] -
Shanghai 28-floor skyscraper destroyed by fire in 4 hrs on Nov. 15, 2010
un sujet a posté FrancSoisD dans L'actualité
"The 2010 Shanghai fire was a 15 November 2010 fire that destroyed a 28-story high-rise apartment building in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The fire began at 2:15 p.m. local time (06:15 UTC),[5][6] and at least 53 people were killed with over 100 others injured. China's Xinhua News Agency reported that the building, at the intersection of Jiaozhou Road and Yuyao Road in Shanghai's Jing'an District [7], was being renovated at the time of the fire.[8] Shanghai residents were able to see smoke from the fire several kilometres away.[9] The ages of those injured in the fire range from 3–85, with the majority (64.5%) over the age of 50. [...end of excerpt from article.]" > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Shanghai_fire -
This is a La Presse article from May 1998 regarding the Expos building an office complex to support their stadium construction project. The two towers next to Windsor station represents the two 50 floor towers that was part of the Canadiens original building plans, as mentioned in the second part of the article.
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The Grand Trunk Railway's Bonaventure Station in the 1870s. The station structure roughly corresponded with Chaboillez Square in Downtown Montreal. This building was destroyed by a fire in 1916. Source et texte entier : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonaventure_Station
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Même si notre hôtel de ville actuel est très beau, l'ancien était splendide. Construction on the building began in 1872 and was completed in 1878. The building was gutted by fire in March 1922, leaving only the outer wall and destroying much of the city's historic records. Source : http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/archives/democratie/democratie_en/expo/reformistes-populistes/construction/piece1/index.shtm Source et texte entier : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_City_Hall Après l'incendie : http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/archives/democratie/democratie_en/expo/reformistes-populistes/construction/piece12/index.shtm
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Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Heritage+building+revamped+LEED+certification/5397141/story.html#ixzz1XsiSv9iG
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http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/sale+city+buildings+prime+spots/5275338/story.html By Allison Lampert, The Gazette August 18, 2011 10:08 PM The former H.L. Blachford Ltd. manufacturing building at 977 Lucien L'Allier St. was purchased for $6.8 million in 2000 MONTREAL - The real-estate arm of the city of Montreal is poised to sell two buildings in prime downtown locations that have been sitting half-empty for years, The Gazette has learned. The two buildings, located near the Bell Centre, are among hundreds of thousands of square feet of downtown Montreal real estate that has recently changed hands – or is to be sold off – for new office and residential projects, at a time when land prices have reached all-time highs. The buildings, which are to be put up for tenders this year by the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal, are located on sites originally destined for the third phase of Quebec’s ill-fated E-Commerce Place. Quebec’s Department of Finance mandated the SHDM to manage the buildings it bought for close to $7.9 million in 2000. “We want to put them for sale by the end of the year,” said Carl Bond, director of real estate management for the SHDM, a paramunicipal organization that owns and manages affordable housing units, along with several commercial buildings. “Those buildings will be sold, but we need an authorization from the (Department) of Finance.” Located at 977 Lucien l’Allier, and 1000-1006 de la Montagne St., south of René Lévesque Blvd., the buildings were initially slated to be demolished to make way for gleaming office towers. They were to be the last part of the 3-million-square foot Parti Québécois-supported project that was later scrapped by the Liberal government in 2003. The 24,000-square-foot site north of the Lucien l’Allier métro station was purchased from manufacturer H.L. Blachford Ltd. for $6.8 million in 2000 – far above the building’s 2011 municipal evaluation of $4.5 million. The disparity between the sales price and the current evaluation, an SHDM spokesperson explained, is because the land was to be used for a lucrative office tower, worth far more than a four-storey manufacturing plant. The two buildings have taken a long time to come to market. That’s because Blachford had a lease at the building until this spring when it ceased operations, Bond said. A travel agency is still operating at the building on de la Montagne, part of which is in a decrepit state. What’s more, the SHDM is now embroiled in legal talks with Blachford over the cost of cleaning up the building, which is contaminated. “Right now the lawyers are talking and we’re hoping to settle this out of court,” Bond said. But some commercial brokers say the SHDM lucked out in waiting. The buildings, they said, would be ideal for residential development at a time when new condos are being constructed in record numbers and downtown land is selling at a premium. “In terms of timing, it’s better to go to the market today,” said Louis Burgos, senior managing director, Cushman & Wakefield, Montreal. Today, land in the downtown area is being sold for $250 to $350 per square foot, brokers say, depending on the level of building density, or how much can be developed overall on the site. The SHDM’s two buildings won’t be coming to market alone. Another three sites have either traded hands, or are to come to market this year for the purpose of development. In late July, a site of Overdale Ave., an estimated 140,000-square-foot plot on the south side of René Lévesque Blvd, beside Bishop St., was sold by a company based out of a Sherbrooke St. West art gallery run by director Robert Landau for $28 million, provincial records show. The buyer is a numbered company owned by investor Kheng Li, who is a partner of E. Khoury Construction Inc. A worker at Khoury who didn’t want to be identified, said the site could be used for either residential or office development. And in April, Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd. announced a $400 million investment for an office and three condo towers to be built near the Bell Centre, on Saint Antoine and de la Montagne Sts. Yet a fifth land site near the Bell Centre is to be put on the market next week, The Gazette has learned. The price these sites will fetch will depend on a combination of zoning and market demand. The red-tape Montreal developers have historically faced in obtaining zoning changes to built higher — and more economically viable buildings — may be easier to deal with if the seller is a city agency, brokers say. alampert@montrealgazette.com http://www.twitter.com/RealDealMtl Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/sale+city+buildings+prime+spots/5275338/story.html#ixzz1VRFi0FYh
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Roman Bezjak Roman Bezjak, who was born in Slovenia but was raised in West Germany, set out to document the everyday qualities of communist buildings. Once the Ministry of Road Construction, this building in Tbilisi, Georgia, consists of five intersecting horizontal bars and resembles a Jenga game. It was designed to has as small a footprint on the ground as possible and to allow natural life to flourish. Now it houses the Bank of Georgia. Roman Bezjak Pictured here is a Cold War-era commercial complex in Leipzig, eastern Germany. Bezjak wants viewers to approach his photos "with a gaze uncontaminated by ideology." Roman Bezjak Nemiga Street in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where an old church still stands in the old city core, between two monstrosities of postwar modernism. Bezjak made repeated trips to Eastern Europe over a period spanning five years. Roman Bezjak Prefabricated apartment blocks in St. Petersburg, Russia. Bezjak wanted to show the buildings from eye level, the way local citizens would have seen them every day. Roman Bezjak A patriotic mosaic on the National History Museum in Tirana, Albania, built in 1981. Roman Bezjak This massive 1970s government building in the eastern German city of Magdeburg become a department store after 1991. Roman Bezjak The "three widows" in Belgrade, Serbia -- three massive apartment blocks. Roman Bezjak Bezjak's book has collected photos of post-war architecture from countries including Poland, Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine and Georgia. Roman Bezjak The 12-story building in the middle is a three-star hotel -- the "Hotel Cascade" -- in the Czech city of Most. Roman Bezjak This publishing house in Sarajevo, Bosnia, looks like a spaceship. It shows signs of damage from the war. "It was near Snipers' Alley," Bezjak recalls -- a street in the Serbian capital that received its nickname during the Balkan wars. Roman Bezjak An earthquake in 1963 gave city planners in the Macedonian capital of Skopje the chance to envision an "ideal city" in concrete. The city's main post office could be from a science fiction movie. Roman Bezjak A department store in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. Roman Bezjak The center of Dresden, where a state department store built in the 1970s was meant to be the height of modernity. The building was torn down in 2007. Roman Bezjak A dinosaur of communism: The roof of the sports hall in Kosovo's capital Pristina looks like the back of a stegosaurus. Built in 1977, it's still in use for athletic events and concerts. Roman Bezjak The Polish port city of Gdansk has prefabricated apartment blocks from the 1960s and 1970s that are supposed to look like waves from the nearby Baltic Sea. Called "wave houses," they take up whole city blocks. The largest is 850 meters long and is said to be the third-longest apartment building in Europe. Roman Bezjak For Bezjak, these buildings are not just relics of a failed system, but also, simply, home. "That can't be measured according to aesthetic or social categories, but only in terms of memories," he says. This photo shows the city of Halle in eastern Germany. Bezjak's photographs repeatedly met with incomprehension from Eastern European colleagues. "They can't understand why anyone would focus on this phenomenon," Bezjak says. Roman Bezjak's book "Sozialistische Moderne - Archäologie einer Zeit" is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011, 160 pages. http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,777206,00.html
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After 57 years, it's bye-bye Ben's Sandwich shop is toast. Montreal landmark closed in December and now faces the wrecker's ball MARY LAMEY, The Gazette Published: Saturday, May 12, 2007 Ben's Restaurant, a Montreal landmark closed in December after a lengthy labour dispute, has been sold and will face the wrecker's ball. SIDEV Realty Corp. has purchased the three-storey building at the corner of Metcalfe St. and de Maisonneuve Blvd., from the Kravitz family. The deal is expected to close on June 18. The purchase price has not been disclosed. SIDEV plans to demolish the building and is examining various options for redeveloping the 6,000-square-foot site. One option would be to build a 12- to-15-storey boutique hotel with retail space on the lower floors, or condominiums, said SIDEV president Sam Benatar, who began discussions with the Kravitz family several months ago. Ben's Deli in 2006: The municipal tax roll pegs its value at $2.62 million.View Larger Image View Larger Image Ben's Deli in 2006: The municipal tax roll pegs its value at $2.62 million. "It's a very small site, but what an incredible location," Benatar said. His firm is also open to working with the Hines-SITQ partnership, which is planning a 28-storey office tower on the lot immediately east of Ben's. SIDEV has been in touch with the SITQ and expects to meet with the real estate development arm of the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec to see whether they can work together. His firm is not planning to sell the land, Benatar said firmly. "We did not buy in order to sell, but we are open to discussing all possibilities." A spokesman for the SITQ said he was unaware of the transaction and doubted the developer would alter its project to incorporate the Ben's property. "We are moving ahead with the project we presented publicly last October," said Jacques-Andre Charland, the SITQ's director of public affairs. The Texas-based Hines Group purchased the parking lot immediately east of Ben's in 2004. It partnered with the SITQ, a major landlord, to build the $150-million project that was to virtually wrap around the restaurant, one of the last three-storey structures along the canyon of office towers on De Maisonneuve Blvd. W. Hines has said publicly that it had hoped to strike a deal to acquire the neighbouring land, too. The Kravitz family has vehemently denied that it was ever approached about selling. The family could not be reached for comment yesterday. Ben Kravitz opened a deli offering smoked meat on St. Lawrence Blvd. in 1908. The Metcalfe St. eatery, with its wrap-around illuminated sign, opened in 1950. The current municipal tax roll pegs the property's value at $2.62 million, including $1.96 million for the land and $660,700 for the building. "There's no question of leaving the building in place. It isn't worth anything," Benatar said. SIDEV owns and manages large office and commercial properties around Montreal, including the Gordon Brown building at 400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. in the fur district, the jewellery business hub at 620 Cathcart St. and a Chabanel district property at 9250 Park Ave. It is also moving ahead with a plan to demolish the Spectrum and build a $120-million retail and office project at the southeast corner of Bleury and Ste. Catherine Sts.
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Je ne sais pas si je me trompe, mais je crois que quelqu'un avait parti un fil sur un projet d'ajouter deux maisons sur le toit de l'édifice N-Y Insurance Life Building de la Place d'Armes. Ça vous dit quelque chose ? Le projet est terminé et à l'émission Visite Libre de artTV, on visite les maisons. Ce qui est spectaculaire, c'est que les chambres de la première maison sont situées dans le clocher de l'édifice. Bref, si vous retrouver le fil svp me le laisser savoir. Merci ! -
Édifice du Crédit foncier franco-canadien - 3 étages (1908-1969)
un sujet a posté monctezuma dans Immeubles détruits
Et je déteste encore plus le Palais de justice. ************************ ************************ Source : guil3433 sur flickr -
(Courtesy of The West Island Chronicle)
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Let's organize a protest against hooligans! Am I the only person in this city who cares enough to propose something like that?
