: Founded in 1915, the city of Montreal-Nord was integrated with the City of Montreal in 2002. Originally Montreal-Nord was part of the Sault-aux-Récollets parish. During the October crisis of 1970 Montreal-Nord was the scene of important events. In 2008, Montreal-Nord sadly made the news again when the young Freddy Villanueva died after being shot during a police intervention. This drama was followed by riots and increase social tension. The borough covers an area of 11,07 square kilometers and has a population of around 85 000 people with a density of 7 500 people per square kilometer.

Montreal-Nord is bordered by the Rivière des Prairies to the north and by the Canadian National railroad track to the south. In this borough, the north-east district appears as a distinct social and urban entity, due as much to the ethnic and cultural diversity of its residents as to the disturbing dislocation of the urban landscape of its boundaries. In this north-east district, where the small scale seems to dominate, one can find the poorest population of the borough with a population density that is among the highest in the City of Montreal.

The proposed site of this Charrette is the eastern part of Boulevard Léger, between Avenue Salk and the Boulevard Albert Hudon. The landscape of this section of the Boulevard is mostly residential and it is punctuated by many parking lots serving commercial buildings that have little architectural value. The Boulevard Léger can be seen as a boundary between the north-east district and the area along the river.

Theory / Alterotopia

The real Agora of the Post Political societies cannot be found at the core of the Polis any more but now lies in in its margins or on its limit
Pierre Ouellet¹

The term Alterotopia, which is understood as a research for alternatives to the usual processes of urbanism and architecture, means as “much other spaces and spaces for the other, as spaces built and shared with the others, with those who are different from ourselves but for whom we care”. Extending the idea of Heterotopia introduced by the great philosopher Michel Foucault², authors Petcou and Petrescu propose to “Agir l’espace – Act on the space” by the confrontations of scales, functions, uses and cultures³.

: Can the actions of architects, landscape architects, city planners and designers to shape the contemporary City be thought differently?

Can one transform a space without qualities into a hospitable and inviting multisensory environment?

Can one see the City differently by drawing it, scanning it, mapping it, walking it or dreaming it?

In the “disperse City”⁴, can one imagine improbable encounters between spaces separated by commercial, regulatory or technical logic?

How can one make of the unfamiliar margins of the City the main material of a project for a community in search of a new urban identity?

Practice / Actions

In his lecture at the CCA in 2008, Bernardo Secchi declared: “My experience tells me that we can have magnificent cities, in all senses, without any outstanding architecture”⁵. Denis Martouzet, in his essay: “Is the Urbanist able to design the spatial conditions of urbanity?”⁶ make us doubt the power and ability of traditional urbanism to create urbanity. Starting from these two paradoxical and critical statements, we challenge the Charrette’s participants to invent and explore new methods and figures that could lead to a different public space.

Can we learn something from the discovery or rediscovery of the urban landscape of Montreal-Nord that will lead us to risk an authentic new urbanism? To face this challenge, the participants will have to rely on their own reading of the site rather than on pre-determinated providential solutions. Putting forward “an Alternate Approach to Urbanism”⁷ and Architecture and the idea of everyday and ordinary joy and pleasure, the material most useful to the imagining of small and large devices responding to the sensitive reality of this district would be for instance urban programming, time planning, vacant lots and interstitial spaces.

: What can the space do?

How can it do it?

How can we make visible and share our proposals with the people who operate the space in which they live?

: 1- Pierre Ouellet and Simon Harel, Quel autre? L’altérité en question, Montreal, vlb éditeur, 2007

2- Michel Foucault, “Des espaces autres”, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no 5, October 1984

3- Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu, “Agir l’espace”, Multitudes, no 31, Winter 2008

4- Jean-Luc Nancy, La ville au loin, Paris, Éditions Mille et une nuits, 1999

5- Bernardo Secchi, Villes sans objets: la forme de la ville contemporaine, Conférence Mellon, Montréal, CCA, September 2008

6- Denis Martouzet, ”L’urbaniste est-il en mesure de créer les conditions spatiales de l’urbanité?”, in Pierre-W. Boudreault and Denis Jeffrey, ed., Identités en errance, Multi-identité, territoire impermanent et être social, Lévis, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007

7- Mirko Zardini, ed., Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism, Montreal, CCA; Baden, Lars Müller, 2005. See also Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi, ed., Actions: What you can do with the City, Montreal, CCA, 2008; Zoë Ryan, The good life, new public spaces for recreation, New York, Van Alen Institute, 2006. One may also refer to the following books: Jonathan Hill, Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative Users, London, Routledge, 2003; Alain Guiheux, Architecture action, une architecture post-théorique, Paris, Sens et Tonka, 2002

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