Stage 2
The agora is the center of social life where it is good to walk and talk with friends. This gathering place includes the traditional lively and fragrant market, where many terraces animate the public space along Jean-Talon Street West (formerly Market Street).
A small tier and a long inclined bench line the urban beach on both sides to encourage gatherings, animation and exchanges, and to hold special events. In the center of the plaza, the bench becomes a vertical sculpture that serves as a beckoning point; small jets of water spout from it to cool the air, and then the water trickles down the urban beach into a gutter that will later join the marsh.
In winter, the sculpture turns into ice and marks the entrance to the skating rink that occupies the urban beach; skaters can put on their skates inside the market building.
(Competitor's text)
(Unofficial automated translation)
Paysaïque: a neighborhood that shares itself
Several qualities of this competent and well-developed project were recognized by the jury and militated in its favour, notably: the very good control of all the issues of the project at all its scales; the richness and diversity of the landscapes created; the care given to the developments; the realism of the project in the short term ("project" component). The proposed facilities and design are for the most part intelligent, accomplished in their conception and well designed, with technologies adapted to the environment and to contemporary technological potential. In this respect, water management and biodiversity are particularly noteworthy.
The service offers several possibilities of declension and adaptation to the conjunctures to come. It offers a flexible and adaptable framework, on which certain developments could be developed with the promoters, adapting to the circumstances of the moment, without losing the main idea of a green corridor that crosses the entire sector. The idea of a central space is not as assertive as in the winning entry, but it is present. It is implied that it is expressed here as a series of green spaces linked together and developed with the developers. In this sense, the party is frank. Also, the emphasis on the eastern entrance of the sector, in connection with the meeting of Victoria Avenue and Jean Talon Street West, is clearly stated. Its development is well developed, but its appropriation may be more difficult than that offered by a large flexible open space, due to its predetermined fragmentation.
More generally, if the strategy of breaking up the public space, at several scales, can be considered a quality of the project as well as a strategy of unification, it did not convince the jury. The division of public spaces that weave their way through the buildings produces, in the center of the sector, a complicated design that contains multiple ambiguities and contradictions, which the jury considers difficult to correct. The plan also appears unbalanced in the location and distribution of development efforts. The great energy of the agora at the eastern end of the site is met with a narrow passageway that leads to a semi-public courtyard surrounded by housing. This courtyard could not be considered as a real public space nor could it become one. Its bypass is not, either, affirmed. It is not clear how the energy initiated at the agora will subsequently spread to the rest of the sector. The college, in the center of the Triangle, takes on excessive importance and creates another unwelcome interruption in the continuity of the public space. The bypasses are, again, not expressed. Further west, the residents of Mountain-Sights Street appear to be neglected with minimal development at the intersection of Paré and Buchan Streets.
Ultimately, the jury feels that the work required to make this detailed project more ambitious is too great to declare it a winner. Its great qualities, which it recognizes with a commendation, ultimately failed to compensate for the strength and clarity of the winning entry, which can profoundly change the life of the neighborhood for decades to come, which is more hypothetical in this case. "It would be like accepting in advance that the central space is not going to happen; accepting that we can't change much and that the private sector makes the city." On the other hand, it is worth noting, also, "the merit of demonstrating that we can work on public space while taking private space into account, without having to expropriate it."
(From jury report)
(Unofficial automated translation)
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