Éva-Circé-Côté Library

WINNER OF A 2024 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

This design demonstrates an understanding of the community, the character of the neighbourhood and the importance of preserving the existing Hibernia Park. The building footprint is reduced by stacking the program on three levels and allowing the public functions to spill out on the ground floor. The strength of this project lies on its relationship to the existing building and the park. The fluid organic forms at the ground floor open to the park, while the structured upper levels and asymmetrical, yet structured approach to the elevations act as a foil to the formality of the stone façade of the existing fire hall building. The low-budget, industrial approach to the structure adds to the charming and inviting nature of the building, and informs the expression of the façade.
– Andrea Wolff, juror

LOCATION Montreal, Quebec

The physical and symbolic heart of Pointe-Saint-Charles, a historically working-class area in Montreal, is Hibernia Park and its old fire hall. 50 years ago, the community fought to preserve the fire hall as a means to oppose development of a boulevard that would cut the neighbourhood in two. They stopped the boulevard, saved the fire hall, and transformed it into their municipal library. 

The present addition will almost triple the size of the existing library. The City of Montreal conducted extensive public outreach and programming sessions with the local community prior to launching a competition for its design. However, the competition process excluded any ties between the designers and the community. To maintain the activist spirit of the community, the architects transformed their working process, inventing citizen-avatars—people exchanging books, elderly people in a dance class, a teacher with their pupils—and role-playing their opinions in the developing work.

This exercise significantly refined the design. The program called for a two-storey addition, but to safeguard the park, the team proposed a compact three-storey library that reinforces the alignment of the fire hall. Elevating a portion of the addition creates a sheltered outdoor space, connected to an interior meeting area. The interior spaces of the library are oriented towards the park.

From a sustainability perspective, the design prioritizes the use of simple systems and materials with local supply chains, including two-storey trusses that use less steel, a ribbed slab with reduced concrete, and exposed mass timber deck and joists. Bricks removed from the existing building will be reused as paving under benches and bike racks, and the stone extracted for geothermal wells will become sub-grade for the park’s hard surfaces. 

Moreover, the design encourages active transportation and urban agriculture, both of which are popular in the neighbourhood. The outdoor agora includes an abundance of bike racks, as well as public access to bike repair tools and compressed air; planting areas are part of the roof terrace and park, while the library itself hosts a seed library and gardening classes. “We have tried to make a library that says: move your body, eat fresh food, and share with your neighbours,” write the designers. “If this project creates even a small change in the transportation and consumption habits of its users, it will increase social cohesion and reduce the neighbourhood’s carbon footprint two orders of magnitude more than a net-zero building could achieve here.”

CLIENT Ville de Montréal | ARCHITECT TEAM Lapointe Magne & Associés—Katarina Cernacek, Pascale-Lise Collin, Émilie Maumy, Océane Perham, Florian Vadjoux, Qiang Fu, Martin-F. Daigle, Soubhi Jabal. L’ŒUF Architectes— Sudhir Suri, Jennifer Benis, Edith Beauvais-Sauro, Foti Boulougaris, Aradhana Gupta, Bahia Burias, Camille Debuisne, Chloé Deblois, Ariane Ducharme | STRUCTURAL L2C Experts-Conseils | MECHANICAL Dupras Ledoux | CIVIL Vinci Consultants | LANDSCAPE NIPPAYSAGE | AREA 3,075 m2| BUDGET $21.6 M | STATUS Construction documents | ANTICIPATED COMPLETION Fall 2027

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (EUI) 97.22 kWh/m2/year | THERMAL ENERGY DEMAND INTENSITY (TEDI) 26.94 kWh/m2/year | GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS INTENSITY (GHGI) 2.33 kg CO2e/m2 | WATER USE INTENSITY (WUI) 0.081 m3/m2/year

As appeared in the December 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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You can read our jury’s full comments here.

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