Help

The Canadian Competitions Catalogue (CCC) search engine is an initiative of the Laboratoire d’étude de l’architecture potentielle in order to render public an essential portion of its documentary database.

In the CCC, a “competition” is considered as a collection of “projects”. Results of a “Simplified Search” and an “Advanced Search” are therefore assembled in two lists identified by the “competitions” and “projects” tabs.

Suggestion

During your first visit, we recommend that you explore the list of competitions in order to obtain an overview of available information and documents: take particular note of the column “% doc”. Following this, you may conduct an “Advanced Search” which is generally more specific and precise, however you may opt for a “Simplified Search”.

Please note that the Canadian Competitions Catalogue is under permanent construction, consequently, a competition’s documentation will vary from one project to another. Thus, certain images may be missing from competition and project files when this information has not been provided from architects and archives centers. Documented project files provide access to slideshows of selected images.

NB : Not all documents within the database are accessible to the public. However, they may be accessed and consulted in our lab by appointment: leap-lab@umontreal.ca (514-343-6111 ext. 1095)

Sorting the results

The “Simplified Search” allows you to search by keywords, by name and by year. For example, if you type the word “jardin”, you will obtain results at both the “competition” and the “project” levels.

1. At the “Competitions” level, you will note:

a. Results in “Architectural Category”
Thus, the CCC will propose the competitions; “Perspective Littoral, Secteur des chutes Montmorency”, “Canada’s First National Urban Park”, or “Toronto Bay Adelaide Park”, as all these competitions are listed in the Architectural Category of “architecture de jardin”.

b. Results in “Name”
Thus, the CCC will propose the competition; “Bibliothèque d’Outremont”, as “Robert Desjardins” was one of the members of the “Louis-Paul Lemieux / Réal Paul, architecte” design team for this competition.

The search engine will equally propose the competition entitled, “Bibliothèque de Châteauguay” as “Alarie Desjardins” was the name of one of the participating design teams.

2. At the “Projects” level, you will note:

a. Results in “Name”
Thus, the CCC will propose the project of “Louis-Paul Lemieux / Réal Paul, architecte” for the “Bibliothèque d’Outremont” competition, as “Robert Desjardins” was a member of the design team for this project.

b. Results in “Architectural Category”
Thus, the CCC will propose the project of “N+B architectes” for the competition entitled, “Perspective Littoral, secteur des chutes Montmorency”, as this competition is listed in the Architectural Category of “architecture de jardin”.

Entire words or parts of words or names

Please note that the CCC search engine not only considers entire words, but also chains of characters situated within a word. For example, if you type “jar”, you will obtain all results that contain this chain of characters, (as for instance; results linked to the Architectural Category of “jardin”).

This would also be the case if you were to type the word “art”, as results at both the “Competitions” and “Projects” levels would be obtained.

1. At the “Competitions” level, you will obtain:

a. Results in “Title of Competition”
The CCC will propose the competitions entitled, “Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal”, “Fontaine du Vieux-Port : Square Jacques-Cartier”, “Édifice à bureau Mozart” as well as “L’art de vivre en ville”, as each of the titles of these competitions include the term “art”.

b. Results in “Name”
The CCC will propose, for example, the competition entitled, “Calgary City Hall”, as “Christopher Ballyn / The webb Zerafa Menkes Houdsen Partnership” was the name of a participating design team for this competition.

2. At the “Projects” level, you will obtain:

a. Results in “Name”
The search engine will equally identify the project of “Saucier et Perotte, architectes (Saucier+Perotte) / Menkès Shooner Dagenais, architectes / Desvigne et Dalnoky, paysagiste / Go multimedia integration technologique” for the “Grande bibliothèque du Québec” competition, as “Guy Desmarteaux” was among the design team members for this project.

b. Results in “Architectural Category”
The search engine will propose, for example, the project of “Pietro A. Caviglia” for the competition entitled, “Ottawa’s Parliamentary”, as this competition falls within the Architectural Category of “quartier”.

The search engine will also identify the project of “Bruce Kuwabara” for “Fontaines du Vieux-Port: Square Jacques-Cartier”, as this competition falls within the category of “ouvrage d’art”.

On the “Competition” page, the “+” sign is used to indicate that there is additional information accessible by mouse-click. You will find general information as well as the “Documentation Percentage” of the competition.

Documentation Percentage (%doc) of a Competition

The “Documentation Percentage” for a given competition corresponds to the following scale:

0% 

The competition remains undocumented. Within this category are situated competitions for which only the title and launch year are known.

25% 

The competition is poorly documented. Within this category are situated competitions for which the names of the various competitors are known, however few projects are documented.

50% 

The competition has an intermediate level of documentation. Within this category are situated competitions for which only several projects are documented. Also classified in this category are competitions for which no visual documentation is available for the winning project.

75% 

The competition is well-documented. Within this category are situated competitions for which documentation exists for practically all competitors, without however, having an exhaustive documentation of the various projects (sketches, photos of models, etc.)

100% 

The competition is almost entirely documented. Within this category are situated competitions for which all projects are exhaustively documented.

A block of 25% is attributed for each of the following items:

• The competition’s programme
• General competition information (address, launch year, architectural category, competition calendar, list of competitors, etc.)
• A description of the competition
• A Press Revue of the competition

Documentation Percentage (%doc) of a Project

A block of 25% is attributed for each of the following items:

• The presentation panels
• Sketches
• A summary of the project and the jury’s comments
• The design team