A PROJECT AT THE CITY SCALE/ ARCHITECTURAL PROMENADE
Acting as a link between the city and surrounding landscape, the St. Jerome Performance Center is situated at a major pedestrian crossroads. To the West its form engages the cathedral, proposing a new institutional axis for St-Jerome. The intersection of these axes and the occurrence of this new institutional presence suggests the creation of a new public space.
At the regional scale, the theater engages the countryside through its relationship with the old rail house. Celebrating it as a conceptual and historical link to the Laurentians and neighbouring regions, the theater uses its axial relationship with the rail house to metaphorically engage with the surrounding countryside. In its physical manifestation, this ‘regional’ axis begins as a series of terraced public benches, and continues, as a promenade, to wrap along the exterior of the theater. As it progresses, gradually spiraling upwards, the promenade envelopes the theater with oblique and linear strata, in a reference to the geology of the surrounding landscape. Throughout its duration, the procession offers visitors views of surrounding countryside, and culminates in a panoramic viewing platform located along the perimeter of the stage house.
The synchronous relationship of the promenade to the institutional theater figuratively unites the design through all scales of landscape. As it wraps and climbs the building, the promenade populates the theater both physically and symbolically. Through carefully choreographed moves, this democratic habitation of the institution at once unites the visitor with all scales of landscape: institution, city and region. In this way, the theater is dressed in a meta-landscape, and its role as institution becomes cemented in a much larger context.
The concept proposes a double use for the theater; first, as a formal performance space, but also as a useable urban object, with terraced exterior gathering space serving as seating for an exterior public stage. This celebratory public space, and future gathering place of Saint-Jerome, takes on a life of its own and, by its nature, encourages visitors to gaze outwards and explore the Laurentian region.
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