Unveiled last May, the new home of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal initially appears to be quite promising. Despite the uninspired “shoebox” design and disregard of its immediate urban condition, the lit glass box showcasing a Quebec beech wood interior will imaginably be a positive addition to the disparate Place des Arts. The hall, named L’Adresse Symphonique, will be a joint-venture project from the powerhouse Toronto firm Diamond+Schmitt Architects with Montreal-based architecture firms Aedifica. The 2,100 seat concert hall will boast room for 120 musicians and 200 singers, and will incorporate an organ pipe a pipe organ. At 19,000 sq m., it is slightly smaller than the Salle-Wilfred-Pelletier where the OSM currently plays and has played since 1963. After decades of government promises (and at least seven plans) to build, the new building has not only been finalized, but has also begun construction. Demolitions on part of the underground parking lot on the northeast side of Place des Arts are making way for the new addition to the plaza.
Moving past the design however, the building will more importantly make its mark as Quebec’s first cultural building to be funded with a public-private partnership (or P3). The $266-million agreement was signed last May, after provincial funding was announced in 2006 under a legislation governing partnerships with the private sector. Under the partnership with the province, the Ovation Groupe, a five-company consortium owned by SNC Lavalin, will design, build, finance, and operate the concert hall for 30 years. After the initial 30 years, the building will be ‘given back’ to the province. The partnership was the quickest and safest way for the government to provide a new building, without financial risk to the taxpayer. Jean Charest has defended the decision of a P3 by stating that it is ultimately beneficial to the taxpayer; Cost overruns will be covered by the private contractor, effectively eliminating a public-sector risk by placing the onus of financing solely on the private sector.
Typically, P3s are a practice reserved for obligatory urban projects such as hospitals, highways, and airports where aesthetic concerns are simply not in the budget. They essentially harness private capital to build public works, something that may begin to taint the construction of cultural facilities in Canada. In the case of L’Adresse, the government (or taxpayers) will pay 40% of the initial cost, which for 30 years will be going towards private profit. Lavalin will also have sole control of the entire budget, and unlike a public project, is not required to publicize how the cost is divided. As you can imagine, design integrity was not given top (or let alone high) priority in the budgetary allocations. In her article last month in the Globe & Mail, Lisa Rochon writes,
“The concert hall is being designed by a consortium, not a chief architect. Lowest bid won the commission. Its technical requirements for an excellent acoustical experience will be met. My concern has to do with how a symphony hall, imagined for 50 years, can be reduced to the vagaries of a money-making operation in which issues of visual impact, finely tuned construction and inspired movement from the surrounding streets barely get discussed. In bookkeeping, aesthetics are too messy to mark on a score sheet.”
With a building virtually identical to the Four Seasons Opera House Diamond & Schmitt designed for Toronto, our beloved L’Adresse symphonique lacks a certain quality and spark. Given the cultural significance of the project for Quebec, Montreal and the OSM, as well as the financial investment, one would hope that a more unique design with more specific design intentions would have been central to the planning. Concert halls, let alone public buildings are not built often and each one should posses a distinct identity that will stand apart from what already exists. For now, Montrealer’s await the opening in autumn 2011 – will the new home to the OSM prove to be worth the wait, despite the potential loss of design integrity?
17 comments
Trois projets se sont rendus en “finale”. Celui choisi est de loin le plus convenu en terme d’architecture. Cela étant dit, à en juger par les dessins, la future salle de l’OSM semble un peu plus prometteuse que le Four Seasons de Toronto, dont la façade de verre sur University Avenue est impressionnante, mais les autres façades totalement insipides (des murs de briques noires aveugles). La version montréalaise, quoique similaire au premier coup d’oeil, s’annonce plus raffinée, plus élégante, avec un traitement soigné de toutes les façades.
Could someone explain why they closed and trashed and dug up parc fred barry beside this new (and not very well-done) OSM building? No one else in town gets to close parks to build something across the street. Parc fred barry was the single best venue at Jazz Fest, you could sit down on grass in a park! Now to see blues shows we have to stand up on asphalt, a real step down for the jazz fest and the reason I skipped it in 2009.
I hope Martin is right that the end result will be elegant, due to real architectural input and aesthetic judgment, despite the bean-counting process that has driven it so far. I haven’t gotten a good look at the one in TO (a burg with much insipid architecture – walking around there I’ve had the feeling that I was inside a life-size version of Sim City) for comparison’s sake.
One eyebrow-raiser, speaking as a musician:
“and will incorporate an organ pipe”
AN organ pipe? Just one? Which note?
Sadly, none of the architecture at the Place des Arts is very inspiring. At least the new hall isn’t similar to the concrete bunker that holds two theatres on the corner of Ste. Catherine & St. Urbain!
It’s not the first P3 in Québec, maybe 3rd or 4th.
Other projects that members of this blog will remember are the new highway 25 bridge, and parts of highway 30.
No, this is not the first P3 project in Quebec – but it is the first P3 cultural project. This is where the issues gets sticky.
P3s are reserved for larger “utilitarian” projects where design is not a significant factor. When you bring corporate profits and hidden budgets into play… well, it’ll be a slippery slope if cultural buildings start becoming indistinguishable from other civic projects. Just something to consider.
diamond + schmitt?
SWEET!!
just take a look at museum station
and four seasons
and varsity arena
and chorus
to see fine examples of piss-poor architecture turning its back on infrastructure, the city, use and design.
Montreal is filled with fine design firms. why outsource it to canada’s worst?
i know that the space that is there right now is really used during the jazz fest. have DSAI considered that?
of course not! they dont even know the jazz fest exists.
get a montreal firm.
Juste un mot à propos du “uninspired ‘shoebox’ design”:
Ce n’est pas que la proposition esthétique de l’Adresse symphonique m’allume particulièrement, mais il convient peut-être de rappeler que la toute première considération dans ce projet est d’ordre acoustique. Ce sont les lacunes acoustiques du paquebot qu’est la salle Wilfrid-Pelletier qui ont rendu nécessaire le projet de l’Adresse symphonique.
L’esthétique est ici par nécessité subordonnée à l’acoustique.
Je ne suis absolument pas un expert en la matière, mais il semblerait qu’il existe un certain consensus à l’effet que l’architecture de type “shoebox” est la plus appropriée pour ce type de salle.
Évidemment, cela n’empêche pas d’aboutir avec une “concrétisation” du type architectural qui donne lieu à une proposition esthétique forte… mais ça limite quand même les options…
Le résultat que nous donne à voir l’Adresse symphonique me fait un peu penser à la Grande Bibliothèque: aspect extérieur plutôt quelconque, intérieur agréable et lumineux.
@jt
Seeing as this was a P3 competition, Montreal firms have already had their fair chance to compete for the project. Their designs or budgets, or combination thereof, did not measure up to that of DSAI’s, so whine all you want, this is the result of the P3 process, direct your disdain there.
Much of the budget for this project will actually go into the government bureaucracy supervising the competition of the firms involved and also maintaining the building over a specified life-span. So if you want to see more dramatic, bigger budget buildings, protest the P3 process. The P3 process doesn’t cost less, it just provides more predictable results — it’s a cushion for politicians and a bloat of additional public sector jobs.
Le projet est très beau comparativement à ceux qui avaient été soumis dans les années 1980.
@sid, parc fred-barry was dug up by the STM to re-do some of the systems such as air flow, etc. The new park to be built on top is part of the Quartier des Spectacles project but the initial work isn’t. It’s actually the STM, a city-run outfit that is to blame. And I’m sure they get everything they ask for from the city…. In a similarly frustrating move, the very colorful apple trees on the esplanade of pda (north of théatre Maisonneuve, south of the new adresse symphonique) were also cut down to make way for the temporary trailers the construction workers use as offices.
The new plans shown here don’t feature trees of course so they would have been cut down (or dug up) anyways but it always infuriate me when anyone presents the new Quartier des Spectacles as being “more green”. They cut down rare and unique mature trees and put up tiny bland trees instead and we’re supposed to think it’s an improvement? The tourists who have no clue what this neighborhood looks like in spring might buy it but the people who live or work here are really fed up with the hype.
The new Hydro building seems to be headed the same path, geared for spectators and public opinion but totally disregarding the locals. I hope these projects succeed but I fear a lot of these places will end up being soul-less and empty outside of the festivals.
ps: Strange that the best view of the building presented here is an impossibility. The new facade and entrance for place-des-arts presented here (on St-Urbain, more or less in front of de Montigny street) is actually hidden being an 9 story tall building that was cropped out of the drawings (that building is the police HQ btw, not about to move or be torn down…)
looks a lot like the new mcgill music building to me!
I have to disagree with your sentiments about the architecture and the disregard for its urban context. On the contrary, this design is quite successful because it relates to context so well; it is another ‘pavilion’ of Place des Arts and it speaks well with both its neighbors, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier and Theatre Maisonneuve. As for the rest of the immediate surroundings, there is not a whole lot there to begin with. That this is primarily glassed will add a much needed element of modernity and and glamour to St. Urbain Street. This area has languished for decades as nothing but a down-trodden pass-through, lifeless and something as high-profile, and shiny and new is much welcome.
“Typically, P3s are a practice reserved for obligatory urban projects such as hospitals, highways, and airports where aesthetic concerns are simply not in the budget.”
Aesthetical value is a fundamental element of integrated urban or architectural design.
The P3 system main goal is a cheap project on a short term. In my opinion it is a waste of money, spending a serious budget on low quality architecture and urbanism.
Serious hospital and airport architecture in Asia and Europe go in an oposite direction.
It’s worth noting that the McGill Superhospital project lost head architect Moishe Safdie last year because he believed the PPP aspect made it unworkable. Also, the president of the order of architects of Quebec wrote an op-ed in La Presse on March 12 saying that any project with a significant architectural component should not be built as a PPP.
In any case, following the credit and financial crises last fall, it’s clear that any risk transferred to the private sector is temporary at best — if some PPP highway or hospital was about to go bankrupt, there is no doubt the public would be forced to bail out the private partners, so why bother with a PPP in the first place?
can you revisit the new OSm hall and specifically to find out if the parc next door will be 1/2 paved over for a parking lot?
here is a picture of the future park-ing lot.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_v0srwAUvkpo/R–JN76OxAI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/-_n8nKJXRk4/s1600-h/IMG_1195.JPG
merci