Urban Housing

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Urban Housing

Firm

Type

Residential ›

The initial concept of this mixed-use project, located in downtown Montreal, was to accentuate the merger of Avenue du President Kennedy with Boulevard de Maisonneuve, the two streets that form the long facades of the site. This directionality provided a strong footing to work in the context of the site, while also informing the development of the building. To achieve this, the directionalities of the roads acted as the primary axes of the building, alluding to the intersection at the northeastern end of the site. The second conceptual formulation, which was particularly for deriving the massing, came as a solution to the height of the building, generated by the large program and small site. By “pulling” the building apart at its intersection, a sense of permeability is created, and therefore breaking up the mass. In doing so, it was further possible to generate a vertical link to the metro station connection below the site. In order to provide more space for living and to provide views, the design for the housing units is multi-leveled with the lowest floor acting as either work space (for the live-work units), solely living space, or a mixture of living and sleeping. The intermediary floor, halfway between each main level, is the entry area, where the use is varied. Finally, the top-most floor is primarily for sleeping, with some units containing living space as well. This stacking of spaces generates both a dynamic circulation inside a unit as well as an entire hallway level for mechanical equipment and service, located every other floor in between unit entry floors. Due to the location of the metro station below the site, a significant portion of the structure of the building had to be restricted to the northwest length of the site. In response to the two distinct directions of the building, the form was allowed to cantilever out over the land above the metro, and the remaining grounded structure ties in below to the metro. The exterior trussing allows for a column- less interior with beams at every node, and transfers the load from the cantilever down to the structure of the metro station.

Product Spec Sheet

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Team

Sloan Springer

Designer

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Urban Housing

Urban Housing

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team