In La Presse’s headline Rue Sainte-Catherine: un projet boudé à Montréal primé à Amsterdam there’s an implicit criticism, as local firm KANVA was awarded a Dutch architecture prize for the inflatable structure it proposed to put over part of Ste-Catherine Street throughout the extended roadworks. This plan was adopted by the Coderre administration in 2016 but thrown out by Projet last year.
But this is the thing: the prize is for the plans only. The thing has never been built nor inhabited or used by human beings. This is academic architecture in a nutshell and part of what’s wrong with modern cities: architects show off plans to each other and award each other prizes, but by the time the thing is built and people are forced to use it, the architects have long since cashed the cheque and moved on to new projects. How the structure interacts with the specifics of the location and the local conditions (climate, economy, urban fabric) and what impact it has on people is not part of the picture.
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