HUMANITI MONTREAL 2021 LEMAY
humaniti is a 120 meters mixed-used complex composed of a 60,000 sq. ft. office building; a 193 rooms hotel overlooking a prominent public plaza; and a 335 rental units and 150 condominium units residential tower. located in downtown montreal where 4 distinct districts converge onto place jean-paul riopelle, a public plaza that is surrounded by palais des congrès de montréal, caisse de dépôt et placement du québec, intercontinental hotel, and humaniti is the last remaining façade of this urban room.
the intent of the project is to create a powerful dialogue with place jean-paul riopelle. it draws the vitality of the public spaces into la flèche, shaping the public realm of the project in both the streetscape and its vertical space. we call this driver the crust.
by allowing the building to respond to the different scales and limitations of the urban context, meanwhile mitigating the public and private realm in close proximity became one of the drivers for the project, we call this frames. the challenge becomes finding opportunities to create spatial moments as we go up in elevation and into the depth of the building, giving users the experience of different scales of porosity. framing the city, framing views, framing moments and framing spaces.
in response to the request of the city to create a building that gives precedents to one of the tallest mixused tower on the edge of old montreal, a tower that would have a presence in the city skyline. at the same time, responding to the request of the client to create a sense of community in a hyper dense neighborhood. the skin of the building becomes the experimental ground for finding the optimalstrategy between the two.
from the center of the place jean-paul riopelle you can see two narrow blades that split. the tallest blade with its truncate shape is an homage to the flatiron building. the second one who touch the ground looks like it splits and fall from the monolith. this breathtaking effect amplified the experience from the place jean-paul riopelle.
from the street level we manage to give back to the community a large piece of land that the pedestrian can see from de bleury street through the first floor and can cross from viger street to de la gauchetière.