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The Telegraph - Property picture galleries http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertypicturegalleries/9126031/Are-these-the-ugliest-buildings-in-the-world.html?frame=2159769

Montreal's metro featured for it's architecture amongst stations from the networks of Washington, Paris, Frankfurt, and Stockholm to name a few: Unreal Underground: the World’s 10 Coolest Subway Systems In urban life, the subway is synonymous with the spirit of the city. It frees the city dweller from the automobile, it moves from point to point with speed while capturing the curiosity of its passenger. From Moscow to Montreal, Paris to Pyongyang, these 10 transit systems house truly stunning subway stations across all aspects of design. So grab your transit card and head underground– get ready to explore the 10 coolest subway systems in the modern world. ... Montreal Metropolitain Another great French-speaking city is home to another great subway, the Montreal Metropolitan subway system. The Montreal Metro was born in 1966, in time for the world expo held the following year in this city. This was a vibrant time in Montreal, and the subway stations that dot this system reflect that vibrancy. Like the stations of the Moscow Metro and the Taipei Metro, this subway system is host to a collection of art galleries throughout its network. Public art ranging from fine to performance is welcomed here, far below the city it services. And with 1,100,000 riders a day, that makes it one of the most popular art galleries in the world. From the design of its subway stations to the culture it embraces, the Montreal Metro is high on our list for the world’s most beautiful subway systems. ... http://www.thecoolist.com/the-worlds-10-coolest-subway-stations/

J'ai eu cette idée de ssc.com. Quelle tour qui est présentement en contruction (ou recemment complétée) n'importe ou dans le monde, aimerais tu voir à Montréal? N'oubliez pas les photos! je commence le MoMa à NYC!!! Vraiment incroyable! NYC n'a vraiment pas peur de construire à l'avant garde. Il ne s'inquiètes pas des osties de NIMBY's!!! New York Times November 15, 2007 ARCHITECTURE Next to MoMA, a Tower Will Reach for the Stars By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF A rendering of the Jean Nouvel-designed tower to be built adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art. The interior of Jean Nouvel’s building, which is to include a hotel and luxury apartments. Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building. If New Yorkers once saw their skyline as the great citadel of capitalism, who could blame them? We had the best toys of all. But for the last few decades or so, that honor has shifted to places like Singapore, Beijing and Dubai, while Manhattan settled for the predictable. Perhaps that’s about to change. A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin’s praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: “It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle.” Commissioned by Hines, an international real estate developer, the tower will house a hotel, luxury apartments and three floors that will be used by MoMA to expand its exhibition space. The melding of cultural and commercial worlds offers further proof, if any were needed, that Mr. Nouvel is a master at balancing conflicting urban forces. Yet the building raises a question: How did a profit-driven developer become more adventurous architecturally than MoMA, which has tended to make cautious choices in recent years? Like many of Manhattan’s major architectural accomplishments, the tower is the result of a Byzantine real estate deal. Although MoMA completed an $858 million expansion three years ago, it sold the Midtown lot to Hines for $125 million earlier this year as part of an elaborate plan to grow still further. Hines would benefit from the museum’s prestige; MoMA would get roughly 40,000 square feet of additional gallery space in the new tower, which will connect to its second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries just to the east. The $125 million would go toward its endowment. To its credit the Modern pressed for a talented architect, insisting on veto power over the selection. Still, the sale seems shortsighted on the museum’s part. A 17,000-square-foot vacant lot next door to a renowned institution and tourist draw in Midtown is a rarity. And who knows what expansion needs MoMA may have in the distant future? By contrast the developer seems remarkably astute. Hines asked Mr. Nouvel to come up with two possible designs for the site. A decade ago anyone who was about to invest hundreds of millions on a building would inevitably have chosen the more conservative of the two. But times have changed. Architecture is a form of marketing now, and Hines made the bolder choice. Set on a narrow lot where the old City Athletic Club and some brownstones once stood, the soaring tower is rooted in the mythology of New York, in particular the work of Hugh Ferriss, whose dark, haunting renderings of an imaginary Manhattan helped define its dreamlike image as the early-20th-century metropolis. But if Ferriss’s designs were expressionistic, Mr. Nouvel’s contorted forms are driven by their own peculiar logic. By pushing the structural frame to the exterior, for example, he was able to create big open floor plates for the museum’s second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries. The tower’s form slopes back on one side to yield views past the residential Museum Tower; its northeast corner is cut away to conform to zoning regulations. The irregular structural pattern is intended to bear the strains of the tower’s contortions. Mr. Nouvel echoes the pattern of crisscrossing beams on the building’s facade, giving the skin a taut, muscular look. A secondary system of mullions housing the ventilation system adds richness to the facade. Mr. Nouvel anchors these soaring forms in Manhattan bedrock. The restaurant and lounge are submerged one level below ground, with the top sheathed entirely in glass so that pedestrians can peer downward into the belly of the building. A bridge on one side of the lobby links the 53rd and 54th Street entrances. Big concrete columns crisscross the spaces, their tilted forms rooting the structure deep into the ground. As you ascend through the building, the floor plates shrink in size, which should give the upper stories an increasingly precarious feel. The top-floor apartment is arranged around such a massive elevator core that its inhabitants will feel pressed up against the glass exterior walls. (Mr. Nouvel compared the apartment to the pied-à-terre at the top of the Eiffel Tower from which Gustave Eiffel used to survey his handiwork below.) The building’s brash forms are a sly commentary on the rationalist geometries of Edward Durell Stone and Philip L. Goodwin’s 1939 building for the Museum of Modern Art and Yoshio Taniguchi’s 2004 addition. Like many contemporary architects Mr. Nouvel sees the modern grid as confining and dogmatic. His tower’s contorted forms are a scream for freedom. And what of the Modern? For some, the appearance of yet another luxury tower stamped with the museum’s imprimatur will induce wincing. But the more immediate issue is how it will affect the organization of the Modern’s vast collections. The museum is only now beginning to come to grips with the strengths and weaknesses of Mr. Taniguchi’s addition. Many feel that the arrangement of the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries housing the permanent collection is confusing, and that the double-height second-floor galleries for contemporary art are too unwieldy. The architecture galleries, by comparison, are small and inflexible. There is no room for the medium-size exhibitions that were a staple of the architecture and design department in its heyday. The additional gallery space is a chance for MoMA to rethink many of these spaces, by reordering the sequence of its permanent collection, for example, or considering how it might resituate the contemporary galleries in the new tower and gain more space for architecture shows in the old. But to embark on such an ambitious undertaking the museum would first have to acknowledge that its Taniguchi-designed complex has posed new challenges. In short, it would have to embrace a fearlessness that it hasn’t shown in decades. MoMA would do well to take a cue from Ruskin, who wrote that great art, whether expressed in “words, colors or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again.”

MONTREAL No North American City Offers Its Style & Ambiance By Ray Chatelin Photos By Toshi No city in North America offers the style, character, or ambiance that you find in Montreal. And no city generates as many questions about its accessibility. Montreal is a place in which history is taken seriously and where today the city's most picturesque parts date from its origins. Montreal was first discovered by the Europeans when Jacques Cartier arrived in 1535 and the first settlement was established by Samuel Champlain in 1611, making the city one of the oldest in the western hemisphere. It’s where churches from the 17th and 18th Centuries and restaurants housed in buildings built in the early 1700s are commonplace. Mark Twain once said you couldn't throw a brick without hitting a church in Montreal. He was right. There are 450 on the island of Montreal, more than in Rome. Notre Dame Basilica, just off the old quarter on Place d'Armes is the most spectacular with its Rose stained glass windows and gold ornamentations. With two-thirds of the nearly two million population in the greater Montreal region speaking French, the city is French not just in spirit but in everything it does. For here is a culture not to be found anywhere else in North America. Latin in temperament, boldly proud, the French have carved a small North American island from a vast prairie of English speaking Canadians and Americans. It's an inheritance of history that French Canada hangs on to with fierce pride. Frankly, there isn't a city on the continent - sorry, New York and San Francisco - more taken by its own unique character. Both cosmopolitan and yet intensely French, it's a place that's extremely fashion conscious, has an old town that dates from the late 1600s, and is a city that’s determined to enjoy life. So here, you find incredible restaurants, a rich cultural collection of theatre in several languages, a great symphony orchestra, opera, ballet, jazz, chamber music, a major world film festival, and a series of quarters - neighborhoods with their own charm. Start with a sampling of exciting new trends and tasty traditions in Old Montréal before trying an exotic treat on the bustling streets of Chinatown. From there, you'll discover the smorgasbord of shops and eateries along Saint- Laurent Boulevard and enjoy a few local favorites like poutine, bagels and smoked meat. The official language is French, though in Montreal English will get you anything you want. Wherever you go, you'll be spoken to first in French, all signs, by law, are in French, and there's only one daily English-language newspaper, the Montreal Gazette. But that's no real problem. Once you reply in English, that's the language you'll be dealt in. Montrealers today speak a total of 35 different languages, reflecting the diverse heritage of peoples who have immigrated to the area. The metropolitan region is the second largest in Canada, behind Toronto and ahead of Vancouver. Just 300 air miles (480 kilometers) from New York, its climate is as volatile as its politics which, to English-speaking Canada, is often unfathomable. In winter, temperatures can drop to -27 F (-33 C), matching what you'd get in mid-winter Minnesota - and rising to 97 F (36 C) in mid-summer, which is about equal to downtown Manhattan. Some 50 different airlines serve the city with inter-North America flights into and from Montreal-Trudeau Airport, the city’s primary arrival point. Montreal is also linked by Amtrak from New York. Three major expressway lead into the city from the U.S. - Route 91 to Boston, Route 87 to New York, and Route 89 to Vermont. Getting around is easy although it often feels as though you've been deposited in the middle of a foreign country with French being spoken everywhere. All of the streets are laid out in grid fashion, much like in New York. It's tough to get lost. The major thoroughfares such as Sherbrooke, Rene Levesque, Maisonneuve, and St. Catherine go east and west and are parallel to the St. Lawrence River, while the small, intimate side-streets with their restaurants and boutiques are north and south and are perpendicular to the river. The subway system is one of the best in North America with four lines - all of which interconnect - and 68 different stops. Le Metro, as it's called in French, runs from about 5:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. daily. You can easily spot them, their large square signs with a white arrow on a blue background pointing downwards to the entrance. The metro stations are also mini art galleries with the city having one of the gorgeous systems in the world. A visit to the metro is highly recommended and should be on your must-see list. The downtown area is laced with underground shopping corridors, 30 km (20 miles) worth. It's possible - sometimes necessary in the winter - to spend the entire day walking the "underground city" that is linked to major above-ground stores. Toronto has the same concept, but without the French style. Downtown is where you find the great boutiques, museums, and department stores. Sherbrooke is Montreal's Fifth Ave with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Holt Renfrew (an exclusive department store), the Museum of Fine Arts, and rows of art galleries, and restaurants that not only line Sherbrooke but radiate out into the side streets. Crescent, MacKay and Bishop Streets are where you'll find the trendiest bars, nightclubs, restaurants and the Hotel de la Montagne (Hotel at the Mountain) with its super-deluxe category baroque-styled facilities. But it's the old town that's the most fascinating. There's only two other cities in North America with anything like it - Quebec City and New Orleans. This is where the world’s second largest French city had its start. The old stone buildings have been renovated since the early 1960s into a variety of more contemporary uses such as restaurants and small shops and clubs, galleries, and private residences. Montreal is unique in that it offers deluxe and expensive category hotels in both North American and Continental style, although the downtown area is also awash with more modest inns and hotels. The finest hotels include The Ritz Carlton, W Hotel, Le Centre Sheraton, Sofitel, Four Seasons, La Meridien, Ramada Renaissance, and the Queen Elizabeth – all of which fall into the kind of international standard familiar around the world. But there's another style, uniquely French that adds to the overall atmosphere. La Citadelle, and Hotel de la Montaigne are two European style hotels, with 181 and 132 rooms respectively, that offer personalized service in more human dimensions than the larger, though exceptionally well appointed, international hotels. The Hotel Shangri-La is an exquisitely decorated hotel in the downtown area that is often overlooked, but that provides exceptional service. Montreal is a place unique to North America and a place that will take you to Europe without ever leaving the continent. For more information check out the website at http://www.tourisme-montreal.org . http://www.visavismag.com/content/view/459/77/ originaly posted by habfanman, SSC