In an image-rich presentation, Andrew King, Lemay’s Chief Design Officer and leader of LemayLab, and conceptual artist Angela Silver present Place des Montréalaises, the winning concept for an international urban design competition to be built in 2022. Poetically merging architecture, landscape design, and art methodologies, this new urban space reframes notions of city building inclusive of women’s contributions framed against Montréal’s monumental cityscape.

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Place des Montréalaises

This talk explores the place architecture, art, and design have in reframing and redefining history.

The winning concept for the public space La Place des Montréalaises pays tribute to the significant contributions of women to Montreal’s history. Poetically merging architecture, landscape design, and art methodologies, this project creates a series of moments in homage to women who have helped define the city. The primary design gesture is an architectural blade, transforming the site from its former use as a highway into a perennial meadow. A landscaped slope rises towards the south, defining the horizon and framing Montreal’s City Hall. New spatial relationships on the site extend through a series of experiential strategies, reframing notions of city building inclusive of women’s contributions. Against the monumental cityscape, Place des Montréalaises honours a diversity of women city builders who have shaped its history and evolution.

To be completed in 2022, this new urban space is a generative and restorative topography drawing on Montreal’s collective memory in recognizing and reframing the past. Lemay design principal and LemayLab leader Andrew King and conceptual artist Angela Silver bring the experience of their 30-year transdisciplinary practice to frame the Lemay + Angela Silver + SNC Lavalin winning proposition for the international urban space design competition.

Andrew King (FRAIC, Prix de Rome) is Chief Design Officer at Lemay and leads the LemayLab. He is one of Canada’s most recognized design leaders, a Fellow of the RAIC, and Professor in Practice at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University. He has evolved a critically-recognized practice model that converges speculative small practice, large firm design leadership, and academic research. King recently led the design team for Montreal’s new CHUM super-hospital, garnering over twenty-five design prizes and awards. Professional recognition includes the Canada Council for the Arts Prix de Rome in Architecture, three Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence, and two AIA Progressive Architecture (P/A) Awards. He has led design projects across Canada, in the U.S. and Europe. King has held visiting chairs in design at McGill University, Carleton University, and Danish Royal Academy of Art. He has lectured on his work across Canada and abroad.

Angela Silver is a visual artist and a proud winner with Andrew King and Lemay of the international design competition Places des Montréalaise. Based in Montreal, she has a teaching and research practice with Andrew King at McGill University. Simultaneously she is a Ph.D candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University exploring ‘Archaeologies of Inscription’. She draws, performs, prints, and reworks information systems and moribund printing tools, exhibiting this research internationally. Silver recently presented work at FACT in Liverpool and has shown her interdisciplinary work at Wordfest International Writers Festival, at DAC in Brooklyn, in Rome, at the Textile Research Center Leiden, the Netherlands, and at artist-run centres in Canada. Her work is in the contemporary textile collection at Idea Exchange in Cambridge, Ontario. www.angelasilver.com

Doors open: 6pm
Talk starts: 6:30pm

‘DesignTO Talks: Place des Montréalaises’ is supported by the Ontario Association of Architects. A certificate for 1 hour of OAA ConEd will be issued to attendees who complete the sign-in sheet after the talk.

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