Part of:

People:

Kuwabara Payne Mckenna Blumberg Architects (archive creator)
Kuwabara Payne Mckenna Blumberg Architects (architectural firm)
Fichten Soiferman et Associés Architectes (architectural firm)

Title:

Concordia University, Montréal (2000-2009)

Date:

2000-2003

Level of archival description:
Project

Extent and medium:

1333 drawings (including 193 printouts and 25 reprographic copies)
0.007 l.m. of textual records

Scope and content:
This project series documents buildings for Concordia University's downtown campus in Montréal from 2000-2009. The office identified the project number as 0004. This project eventually became known as Le Quartier Concordia.

This project was the winning submission of an architectural competition by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, in joint-venture with Fichten Soiferman et Associés Architectes, to design an integrated, vertical campus to revitalize and reinvent the University. This project consisted of three interconnected high-rise buildings on either side of Montreal's Guy Street, below De Maisonneuve Boulevard, to rehouse three important faculties: Visual Arts, Engineering and Computer Science, and the John Molson School of Business. These three buildings had glazed curtain wall exteriors with copper-coloured metal lines that created visual consistency inside and outside of all three buildings. Large art installations were also included on the façades. Triple-height atriums on the ground floors of the Engineering Building and the John Molson building added welcoming, public areas to the campus, and connected pedestrians to the Guy-Concordia metro station below. The tops of these two buildings featured massive north-south canopies that pointed from Montreal's Mont Royal down to the St. Lawrence River. The shorter Visual Arts building was directly connected to the Engineering building and today they are known together as the EV Building. The building interiors, comprised largely of stone tiles and concrete, featured large, multi-storey spiral staircases in a nod to the famous exterior spiral stairs of Montreal homes.[1]

The Engineering and Visual Arts buildings were completed in 2005 and the John Molson building in 2009. Recladding of the exterior of another campus building to match these was completed in 2011.[2] It should be noted that these project materials were donated to the CCA part way through the project's realization.

The project is recorded through drawings and textual records dating from 2000-2003. The drawings are mostly originals but reprographic copies and printouts of CAD drawings are also included. The drawings consist of sketches, digital renderings, plans, elevations, sections, perspectives, details and construction drawings. The textual records are arranged within the drawings and consist of research.

[1]Contributions from Phyllis Lambert et al., The Architecture of Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna, Blumberg (Boston, MA: Birkhäuser-Publishers for Architecture, 2004), 180.
[2]"Le Quartier Concordia." KPMB. Accessed July 11, 2019. http://www.kpmb.com/project/concordia-university-john-molson-school-of-business/

Reference number:

AP056.S1.2000.PR08

Arrangement:
Materials in this project series were arranged based on the classification scheme of the office, and some were arranged by material type.

Location:

Montréal Island of Montréal Québec Canada

Language of material:

English
French