Description
Problem statement
"Où est le St-Laurent, mon fleuve? Il est là. On ne l’entend pas. Il est comme le cheval qui attend dans l’écurie. On ne le voit pas. Mais je sens qu’il est là, qu’il coule en faisant semblant de ne pas couler, qu’il embrasse la ville..."Le nez qui voque, Réjean Ducharme, (Gallimard, 1967)
Interdependency: Montréal and its’ river
‘Tiohtiake’, the aboriginal name for the site of Montreal means “island amid the rapids”. Situated at the confluence of the St-Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, the islands of Montreal and Laval create three channels tumbling through rapids before meeting at their eastern end. The initial Ville-Marie settlement of Montreal was established at this location, the furthest upstream point on the St-Lawrence accessible by large ships. For more than three centuries the economy of the city was largely a product of that hydrographic condition, a natural obstacle requiring the transfer of goods between large ships and smaller boats or the railway on their way in and out of the continent.
The forms of water: ice floes and floods
The island of Montreal inhabited by early settlers was a rich agricultural plain surrounded by the river, criss-crossed by streams, dotted by wetlands and punctuated by Mont-Royal. In the winter, snow and ice characterized the landscape of the city, covering the island with a white blanket for four months a year. The river would become a sheet of ice, creating a temporary bridge to the south shore. In the spring, huge ice floes and ice dams would build up in the northward flowing river, temporarily raising the water level and flooding the lower lying areas of the city, particularly Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles.
The disappearance of water in the city
Over time, access to the river was obstructed by the infrastructure of the industrial port. It was perceived as ‘a kind of liquid railway’, absent from the vocabulary of early modern city planning. The river served as an open sewer capable of absorbing and diluting the waste and effluent of the growing metropolis. Perceived as obstacles to urbanization and as risks to public health, streams and wetlands across the island were drained, channelled into canals and ditches within the developing street grid and eventually buried underground in a network of sewers, disappearing from the urban environment and the consciousness of its citizens. With the opening of the Seaway in 1959, the obstacle of the rapids was definitively overcome and Montreal’s geographic and commercial ‘raison d’être’ erased.
Reconnecting the city and its’ river
In the second half of the 20th century, the connection between the St-Lawrence and the city, between Montrealers and water has emerged as a recurring theme in regional and municipal planning and topic of public concern of the post-industrial city. This change in attitude is eloquently illustrated by the siting of Expo 67 on a series of islands in the river, structured by a network of man-made canals. It is further evident in the ambitious yet unrealized intentions of the ‘Projet Archipel’ in the late 1970’s, a turning point in the perception of the watershed around Montreal. The construction of a long overdue water treatment facility in the early 80’s contributed to a significant improvement to water quality in the river. It was affirmed by the redevelopment of the Lachine Canal as a linear park in 1978 as well as the subsequent reopening of the Canal to boating in 2002, the popular redevelopment of the Vieux Port as public space through the 1980’s and 1990’s, and the ongoing debate about waterfront access and the redevelopment of Notre Dame est. Access to the river has been significantly improved with the development of a continuous linear waterfront park from Verdun to Lachine as well as a network of waterfront parks around the island. The few remaining wetlands and streams are now subject to strict environmental legislation.
The current situation
The state of infrastructure of water supply and disposal is the subject of considerable concern as the aging sewer system is unable to accommodate increased rainfall resulting from climate change, particularly with a combined sanitary and storm sewer system typical of almost any older North American city. Around the world, coastal cities are confronting the consequences of rising sea levels, particularly in the redevelopment of abandoned industrial ports. The technical, logistical and economic limitations in creating infrastructure to manage dramatic changes in climate have spawned new ways of thinking about infrastructure – as landscape, as pubic amenity and as distributed networks.
It still seems that water is a foreign element to the urban environment – an exceptionally abundant resource taken for granted, a nuisance to be disposed of as expediently as possible. Surrounded by water on all sides, covered by snow for almost half the year and burdened by an aging and intricate infrastructure to manage its’ supply and disposal, we generally choose to ignore the potential of water to enrich the experience of the city and the environment.
THE SITE : the Ste-Anne and St-Gabriel wards (Griffintown and Pointe-Saint-Charles)
The charrette proposes the particular environmental and historical context of the Ste-Anne and St-Gabriel wards as a site and a point of departure. They are bounded by the tailrace of the Canal de l’Aquéduc and Highway 20 to the west, the Lachine Canal and rue Notre Dame to the north, rue McGill to the east and the river to the south, it is an area that includes Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles, the Lachine Canal and the Mackay Pier (Cité du Havre). These neighbourhoods are located almost entirely below the 17m topographic contour line.
The relationship between urban development and water has defined the landscape of this neighbourhood for over 300 years:
- the natural marshland rich with bird and animal life that served as an aboriginal hunting ground up until the mid 19th century;
- the meandering Rivière St-Pierre winding down the western slope of Mount-Royal and below the Falaise St-Jacques, one branch of which spilled into the St. Lawrence at the foot of the present day Champlain Bridge and another at Pointe-à Callière;
- the opening of the Lachine Canal in 1825, providing a bypass around the rapids and providing hydraulic energy that spurred development of Canada’s 19th century industrial heartland and the surrounding neighbourhoods;
- the construction of the Victoria Bridge in 1859 and the subsequent development of the Grand Trunk shops and Goose Village or Victoriatown beginning in the 1860’s, a waterfront village of 300 homes built on the point north of the Victoria Bridge, demolished to make way for the entrance to Expo 67 a century later;
- the floods of the 1880’s, and particularly the flood of 1886 that reached the 17m elevation extending as far as Chaboillez Square and the foot of Beaver Hall Hill (so evocatively described by Jane Urquhart in her novel ‘Away’),
- the subsequent construction of the St-Gabriel levee and the Guard Pier (Mackay Pier or Cité du Havre) in 1890.
During the 20th century, dumping of garbage and fill in the river at the tip of Point-St-Charles up until the opening of Expo 67 created a nearly kilometer wide barrier of toxic landfill between the residential neighbourhoods and the river, cutting the population from any contact with the waterfront. The expansion of the CN shunting yards during the Second World War, the construction of the Bickerdike and Windmill Point piers and the opening of the Autoroute Bonaventure along the river’s edge affirmed that separation in favour of major transportation and port infrastructure.
In contrast to increasing accessibility and presence of water in other parts of Montreal in recent decades, the appropriation of water in Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles has been timid, limited almost exclusively to the Lachine Canal. In fact, the Canal contributes little to the quality of life of adjacent neighbourhoods, its’ influence failing to extend more than a few meters outside of the corridor of the linear park. At another scale entirely, surfing on the standing wave of the rapids adjacent Cité du Havre below Habitat 67 is a popular and exotic appropriation of the river, if somewhat marginal.
New redevelopment projects in Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles abound including at least 5000 new units of housing and demonstrating the popular appeal of living near the Canal and the river:
- the first phase of the Autoroute Bonaventure redevelopment including 500 units of housing;
- a scaled down Griffintown project for a minimum of 1375 apartments in four buildings adjacent the canal between Wellington and the train viaduct;
- the ‘Bassins du Nouveau Havre’ project on the former Canada Post site including 2000 or more units;
- the redevelopment of the CN yards including 800 units of housing and new maintenance facilities for AMT’s suburban trains;
- the renovations of the Nordelec building and adjacent properties providing 1200 units of housing; and
Water plays a structuring role in some of these projects, such as:
- subsequent phases of the redevelopment of the Autoroute Bonaventure are intended to free up land on the waterfront;
- the Griffintown redevelopment creates a significant urban vocation that will benefit from the reopening of the Peel Basin in the canal;
- the Bassins du Nouveau Havre proposes an intimate relationship between water, urban housing and the Lachine Canal including the reopening of the original basins to manage surface water runoff redirected to the canal.
- major water management infrastructure is planned for the redeveloped Griffintown neighbourhood including a 25 000 m3 stormwater retention facility on rue William between de la Montagne and McGill.
For the moment, the neighbourhood remains isolated from the river, from its waterfront – a missing link in the chain of public access to the waterfront xtending from Lachine to the Vieux Port. Despite their long and intimate relationship with water, the urban environments of Griffintown and Point-St-Charles are hot and dry, paved in concrete, asphalt and gravel, disconnected from the river and the Canal - an urban desert surrounded by water.
The challenge
« Nous pensons souvent l’eau comme un produit. Nous oublions que c’est un milieu vivant et que nous faisons partie de cet écosystème. Nous sommes faits à 70% d’eau et 45% des Québécois boivent l’eau du fleuve. Il n’y a pas de frontière entre l’écosystème du St-Laurent et notre organisme. Son eau coule dans nos veines »
Karel Mayrand, directrice générale de la fondation David Suzuki au Québec
The 2011 Charrette solicits proposals to posit a new relationship between water and city living, to think of innovative ways to imagine and celebrate the presence of water in the urban environment and daily life of Montreal. Operating at the scale of a particular location in the Ste-Anne and St-Gabriel wards or across the area as a whole, the Charrette challenges participants to propose specific architectural, urban and landscape interventions and public works that cause us to reconsider the presence of water in the city – as civic responsibility, as practical amenity, as recreational diversion, as public infrastructure or as work of art.
Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their originality and creativity:
- in establishing the place of water as a structuring élément of the project and as an intégral part of city life ;
- in responding to environmental and ecological concerns, particularly with respect to water;
- in generating civic infrastructure, public space and urban landscape;
- in interpreting the needs and aspirations of contemporary urban life;
- in reflecting the specific physical, cultural and environmental context of Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles.
Images of the problem statement
Documents
Maps of Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles
1903-1904 (.jpg)
Current condition (.dwg)
Current condition (.pdf)