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Justice may be blind but this is going too far!

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Palais de Justice on rue St. Antoine

Leaving City Hall one blisteringly cold day in January, I realized the entire east wall of the Quebec Superior Court building is windowless. I’m no architectural snob, but brutalism of this magnitude needs to be pointed out and scorned with all our collective energy.

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36 comments

  2. Perfect place for a giant billboard or mural

  4. All the more reason to knock it down – it’s so out of place – a tribute to not integrating with the existing environment…

  5. Is there a place for austerity in the city or does everything have to be Fiesta-fied?

    Maybe we can put a giant mural of a day-glo-dressed hipster girl in leggings, doing a line of cocaine, as to assuage the sensibilities of that demographic to whom a blank wall on a civic building was the most distressing.

    Any statues of Justice nearby? Let’s give her a pirate hat! And skulls in her balance! Yeah!! Justice is bullshit!

  6. Les interventions «architecturales» du gouvernement, à Montréal, n’ont pas toujours été très heureuses…

    Regardez donc les horreurs telles que le palais des congrès, ou l’institut hôtelier…

  8. Is there the off chance that there may have been an adjacent building that was torn down soon after construction?

  9. Maybe if it’s left plain, things could be projected onto it, at least on summer evenings.

    It really is a horror of a building to have been constructed on that spot – but the city’s likely to make that same kind of mistake over and over (viz. Griffintown).

  10. Its is heavy. Its brutal. I like it. Similar but not as elegant as the UN building in NYC which also has two windowless facades. I think both buildings evoke a sense of weight and of willfullness that speaks to their role in society.

  11. I have become much more fond of brutalism of late, only because it is the most maligned of all the architectural styles: often for good reason.

    The main architects for the new Palais de Justice were local guys Pierre Boulva and Jacques David, who also designed such 60s landmarks as 500 Place d’Armes, Théâtre Maisonneuve, the Dow Planetarium and the Place-des-Arts, Atwater and Lucien-L’Allier metro stations.

    And yeah: I think they screwed up big time on this one. You’ve got a building overlooking some of the most historic ground in Montreal: would it have killed them to put in windows?

    I’d really love to know the decision-making that went into this. If anyone knows, please post.

  12. This building is *NOT* brutalism–the way you’re using it is a misnomer. “Brutalism” comes from “béton brut,” not “brutal.”

    Think Place Bonaventure–most brutalist architecture is clad with exposed concrete or at least imitates its aesthetic: repetitive geometrical shapes, extreme angles, and changes in textures. The Palais de Jusitice is entirely clad with granite and metal and, being mainly a featureless box, to me is a pretty obvious example of modernism.

    Brutalist buildings are FAR more expressive than this, occasionally bordering on fanciful (or awkward, depending on when you stare at it). Think about Boston City Hall.

    So often it seems people who “loathe” or “scorn” brutalism often don’t even know what they are exactly talking about. Haha…though some might loathe or scorn it even more if they were clear on the term!

  13. Shawn,

    They built that monstrocity when what you accurately describe as some of the most historic ground in Montreal (the champ de Mars) was an unsightly parking lot that no one cared to look at.

    Not only is the Palais de justice a major architectural disaster and an eyesore, but it was also a heritage catastrophe as a tiny neighbourhood around what was known as Little St. James Street/la petite rue St-Jacques was wiped out to build it.

    Ironically, my professional commitments require that I spend a substantial amount of time there. :-)

    Antonio

  14. MB is totally right: it may be brutal but it ain’t brutalism.

    And thanks Antonio, you make a good point. Champ de Mars had become a place to park your car, nothing more.

  15. I quite like the Palais, It is sufficiently elegant given the quality of the materials and represents an important period in architecture. It is the stark contrast with the rest of the neighboring buildings that gives the makes the urban fabric interesting. Likewise, the Banque Canadienne Nationale Building on Place D’armes is equally elegant in all its international style. I would not have prefered some hideous post-modern collage of building in either location. The populist belief that everything must fit into context of the neighborhood goes a bit overboard sometimes. Such a rigid stance often times results in mediocrity as dazzling or innovative architecture is chased away. It can also result in a BORING urban fabric. That said, I loath tearing down anything old.

  16. Yeah, they’ll take away my urban planning degree if they hear me say it but I like the Palais de justice. The St-Antoine frontage is meh, and it certainly doesn’t do much for St-Laurent, but the entrance on Notre-Dame is quite good and the granite cladding of the eastern wall looks quite sublime when the light is right. As a project, it was and is a pretty big white elephant, and I’m sure whatever it replaced was far more interesting and valuable. But as a building that’s there it doesn’t fill me with rage or shame.

    MB is on point: actual brutalist architecture, which the Palais de justice is most emphatically not, is getting a terrible rap these days. That’s in no small part due to the unfortunately literal translation of its French moniker. A lot of it is really quite lively, compared to other postwar institutional styles. Like the giant UQAM sciences building behind Place des Arts, the one that predated the Cour des sciences project — a deadly dull and thoroughly lame retread of 1950’s university architecture, nothing marginally subtle or contextual about it and executed in a dumpy fashion, and it elicits nary a peep of condemnation.

    As for the decision-making that went on behind the Palais de justice, check the “Montreal thinks big/Montréal voit grand” exhibition catalogue put out by the CCA. The original idea was for a giant slab skyscraper about twice as high; think of the two volumes you see in the picture above stacked on top of one another and pushed closer to the Notre-Dame side.

  17. Brutal or Modern, the Palais de Justice is not going anywhere soon so we might as well put its blank East and West facades to good use. How about projections of text and images or murals. Even better would be outdoor movies in the summertime; bring a lawn chair or blanket out to the lawn and enjoy a flick!

  18. DC, the UQAM building you cite unfavourably: you don’t mean the big oval building on President Kennedy right behind but Place des Arts (which I quite like) but rather the complex along Saint Famille, right?

  19. no one has yet mentioned the real crime of the palais de justice: it blocks off any views of beautiful Mont Royal from anywhere in old Montreal or the vieux port park.

  20. I actually find this view of the Palais de justice very beautiful and elegant. It’s the south and north sides that I find horribly yawn-inducing, and I find it such a shame that they went wide instead if high, since it sits sooooo massivly and heavily on top of Old Montreal viewed from the port.

  21. I like this wall. You will not hear anyone coming to Montreal for the first time saying that this wall is ugly (I am replying to some of the comments, not the article). However, I really like the idea to project images, letters, or movies on it. That would be really cool.

  22. Well, unless you are in a rooftop in Old Montreal, there are no views of Mount Royal. Any building there would effectively block the view of the mountain, whether it is 6 or 16 floors.

  23. I love this wall! It is simple, elegant, to the point. It is a blueprint of modernist architecture and should be left alone. No art whatsoever on its facades, it was not meant for that. We have in fact a deep tendency here in Montreal to loathe our modernist treasures, and we love so much our tiny 3-storey buildings, don’t we?

    I bet most of the time people don’t even notice these walls, see the guy who wrote this article noticed it for the first time and he’s probably been there many times.

  24. I think more so than Brutalism itself, there is a growing rejection of the Corbusier-esque anti-urban urbanism with its huge lawns, pointless vast tracts of grass and juniper shrubs (like the Parc-Pins intersection) and budget build-a-towers that have no relation to the street.

    Or at least I hope.

  25. mooodi is right, either there was a building next to it that was torn down, or they built the outside wall deliberately without windows so they could attach a new building to old one. it would be much more expensive to demolish a wall covered in windows than to simply build a windowless wall in the first place.

    not aesthetically pleasing, maybe, but still logical.

  26. Il n’y a jamais eu d’autre batiment à côté ni aucun projet d’en construire un mitoyen ! Le projet à simplement été conçu ainsi !!

  27. The large blank walls are, as others noted, NOT examples of Brutalist architecture. They are actually expressions of the need for massive shear walls to ensure that a slab-type building doesn’t shake itself to pieces in the case of a earthquake.

  28. The walls are also on the north side of the building. In northern climates windows should generally not be placed on the north side of a building because they’re difficult to insulate.

    I’m all for “form no longer follows function” but placing windows on this side of the building would imply bad engineering design.

  30. I always referred to this building half-jokingly as «The Ministry of Truth», referring to George Orwell’s 1984 obviously. I’m sure the author pictured something like that when he tought of «Minitru».

  31. I always thought it would be nice to have movies projected onto that wall in the summer.

  32. Whatever the Palais is it’s certainly not a budget building. Starkness ain’t cheap, and the granite cladding on the narrower walls has held up well and gives every indication of being quality work. I actually think it engages quite successfully with Notre-Dame, and contrasts with its context in some agreeable ways. It’s certainly not what I would put there, and the basic program of a judicial skyscraper has a lot of flaws, but it’s far from an unthinking tower-in-a-park.

    Shawn, actually I am referring to the partially ovoid building on Président-Kennedy. The UQAM complex makes an interesting contrast with the Palais de Justice. In both cases, wildly overoptimistic estimates of the eventual need for interior space drove the abandonment of the traditional strategy for expanding French institutional buildings, which is to extend the wings outward in segments, as the need arose, and enclose courtyards step by step. Think of the older parts of Hôtel-Dieu, or the Grey Nuns motherhouse, which were expanded piecemeal but maintained the same logic and overall style.

    The earlier UQAM chemistry building along Ste-Famille does that quite nicely, has nice details and fenestration, and plays well with the landmark houses opposite as well as the original Arts et Métiers building along Sherbrooke. The way the low-rise portion of the Palais works with the garden of the old Palais next door suggests that a similar approach could have quite easily been taken there. But in both cases, the compulsion to advertise the vigor and impact of the institutions involved led to ruinously expensive buildings that were too big for their sites, their budgets, and their purpose.

  34. Moi je l’aime aussi!

    Why does it need to be scorned? I mean if you don’t like it, don’t… well you can’t even buy a condo in there or anything so it is irrelevant. If you like one architecture enjoy it, if you don’t like another don’t like it, architecture is art – can’t please everyone.

  35. Cette discussion est assez intéressante, elle m’a servit dans mon projet. ce projet fait partie d’un cours de DESS en Design d’événement, et il répond à l’appel du maire de Montréal pour animer le mur du palais de justice.

    Je vous invite d’aller sur ce lien: http://souha.tahrani.com et de donner votre point de vue sur l’idée proposée pour animer le mur!

    Merci

  36. Brutal – no. Imposing – yes. Its the Palais de Justice and should be representative of that.

    And have you looked at this building in the sun sets, the glass is the perfect color and this building truly glows.

    It is a treat for Montréal to have such a building with so much contrast between its facades: glowing glass and stark granite

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