Quartier des spectacles

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Quartier des Spectacles
Neighbourhood
Intersection articulee. Architecture relationnelle 18, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 2011.jpg
Place des festivals, at night.
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Red pog.svg
Quartier des Spectacles
Location of Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal
Coordinates: 45°30′37″N73°33′50″W / 45.51028°N 73.56389°W / 45.51028; -73.56389
Country Canada
Province Quebec
City Montreal
Borough Ville-Marie
Postal Code
H2L, H2X, H2Z, H3A, H3B, H5B
Area code(s) 514, 438
Place des Arts, facing Sainte-Catherine Street. Place des Arts 08.JPG
Place des Arts, facing Sainte-Catherine Street.
2-22 Sainte-Catherine Est. 2-22 Sainte-Catherine Est 16.jpg
2-22 Sainte-Catherine Est.
Promenade des Artistes [fr]. FIJM 2013 - 125.jpg
Promenade des Artistes  [ fr ].

Quartier des Spectacles is an arts and entertainment district located in the eastern section of Downtown Montreal, designed as a centre for Montreal's cultural events and festivals.

Contents

With a total area of almost one square kilometre, the Quartier is bounded by City Councillors Street to the West, Berri Street to the East, Sherbrooke Street to the North and René Lévesque Boulevard to the South, encompassing all of the district known as Montreal's Latin Quarter.

First proposed in 2002, the area is intended to house 30 performance halls totalling almost 28,000 seats (including the Place des Arts cultural complex), international festivals, art galleries and various cultural exhibition and broadcast facilities. The Quartier des spectacles hosts nearly 8,500 jobs linked to cultural activities, from education and creation to production, exhibition and broadcasting.

The area is now home to many of Montreal's major festivals, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Francofolies and the Just for Laughs comedy fest. Urban design features of the district include concert spaces, tiered green space and stonework, illuminated fountains, various forms of street lighting, mist machines, bike paths and illuminated walkways. [1]

The central public space for the Quartier is the Place des Festivals  [ fr ], a new urban square located on the "Balmoral Block" on Jeanne-Mance Street, facing Place des Arts. The latter has become a focal point for outdoor events. Features of the square include a water fountain with 235 in-ground jets, four light towers, two glass-encased restaurants, a grassy slope and granite walkways. [1]

New facilities

Édifice 2-22  [ fr ] is a cultural centre specializing in contemporary art. Its ticket office at the corner of Saint Catherine Street and Saint Laurent Boulevard was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. [2]

The Maison du développement durable  [ fr ], designed by Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes and adjacent to the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, was the second building in Canada to obtain the LEED Platinum sustainable building certification .

The district includes the Louis Bohème, a 28-storey condo tower designed also by Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux. The tower was approved despite objections from Montreal International Jazz Festival president Alain Simard. [3]

In the fall of 2017, the National Film Board of Canada is scheduled to move its headquarters to Montreal's Quartier des spectacles, in a new building being constructed by the city of Montreal, adjacent to the Place des festivals square. The NFB will occupy the first four floors of the structure, which will allow the NFB to interface more closely with the public and expand its digital media research and production facilities. [4]

List

Pre-existing facilities

Pre-existing cultural facilities in the area demarcated by the Quartier des spectacles include:

Demolished features

The area lost a key arts venue with the demolition of the Montreal Spectrum. [8] Sixty-seven mature crabapple trees were cut down in a small square, Place Albert-Duquesne. [9]

Montreal's former red light district on Saint-Laurent Boulevard is being demolished, with the facades of six buildings dismantled for possible future reuse, in a move condemned by advocacy group Heritage Montreal. [1]

Costs

In 2008, Mayor Gérald Tremblay stated that the project would come in as budgeted at $120-million and spur development in the immediate neighbourhood for a projected total of $1.9 billion in private investment. [10]

In June 2012, it was reported by the Montreal Gazette that the cost of the district's public spaces alone would be $147 million, with $67 million from the city of Montreal and $40 million each from provincial and federal governments. In 2011, Montreal’s auditor-general criticized the city for hand-picking one non-profit corporation, Angus Development, to build the 2-22 building and redevelop Saint-Laurent Blvd., and for failing to open the process up to tender, losing money by selling city land at below market value. Inadequate foundations, damage and wrong choice of joint sealers in 2011 also led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in repaving costs. [1]

Notable events

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Norman McLaren was marked by a National Film Board of Canada project entitled “McLaren Wall-to-Wall,” in which projections of short films inspired by four McLaren animated works were projected onto landmarks in the Quartier, from McLaren’s birthday on April 11 to June 1, 2014. [11]

Related Research Articles

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Place des Arts is a major performing arts centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the largest cultural and artistic complex in Canada.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quartier Latin, Montreal</span> Neighbourhood in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The Quartier Latin is an area in the Ville-Marie borough of Montreal, located east of the Quartier des Spectacles and west of the Centre-Sud and Village, centred around UQAM and lower Saint-Denis Street. It is known for its theatres, artistic atmosphere, cafés, and boutiques. It owes its name, a reference to the Quartier Latin in Paris, to the presence of the École Polytechnique de Montréal and the nascent Université de Montréal in the 1920s. In the 1940s the university moved out and headed for a new campus on the north slopes of Mount Royal, far from the downtown borough. In the late 1960s UQAM was born and established itself in the Ville-Marie borough, giving a modern underpinning to the name. A large junior college, the CEGEP du Vieux-Montreal also moved in at about the same period.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier</span>

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier is a large multipurpose venue in Montreal, Quebec equipped with sophisticated technical equipment. It seats 2,982 people and is part of the Place des Arts cultural complex in Montréal's Quartier des Spectacles entertainment district. It is the largest multipurpose stage in Canada.

Montreal was referred to as "Canada's Cultural Capital" by Monocle Magazine. The city is Canada's centre for French-language television productions, radio, theatre, film, multimedia, and print publishing. The Quartier Latin is a neighbourhood crowded with cafés animated by this literary and musical activity. Montreal's many cultural communities have given it a distinct local culture.

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The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex.

Begone Dull Care is a 1949 visual music animated film directed by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dare-Dare (artist-run centre)</span>

Dare-Dare, stylized DARE-DARE, is an artist-run center and a nonprofit organization located in Montreal. It was founded by Sylvie Cotton and Claire Bourque. Its offices are located in a construction trailer, decorated by artists and stationed in different districts on the island of Montreal. The name given by the center to these successive temporary locations is Dis/location: urban articulation project.

Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent was a theatre company that was founded in August 1937 at Collège de Saint-Laurent in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, by Émile Legault, Roger Varin, and Léonide Lavinge. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia it was the "[...] most influential theatrical company in the history of Québec". The company dissolved in 1951.

<i>Le Parterre</i>

Le Parterre, originally called Place de l'Adresse-Symphonique, is a public square in the Quartier des spectacles district in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This space in front of the Maison symphonique de Montréal is intended as a performance space for different musical ensembles, as well as a setting for highlighting the architecture of the symphony house.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Heinrich, Jeff (June 2, 2012). "Quartier des Spectacles: Designed for one and all". Montreal Gazette . Montreal. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Montreal entertainment district building to go up without federal help," CBC News
  3. ↑ Lamey, Mary (2007-09-28). "Condos called catalyst for change in the Quartier des spectacles". Montreal Gazette. Canwest. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
  4. ↑ "L'ONF déménage dans le Quartier des spectacles à Montréal". CBC News (in French). Montreal. 25 September 2014. Retrieved 26 September 2014.
  5. ↑ "Théâtre TELUS - the new cultural destination in Montreal" (Press release). Canada News Wire. 2008-03-18. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  6. ↑ DeWolf, Christopher (2008-01-27). "Cultural space to be built on Saint-Laurent metro". Spacing Montreal. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  7. ↑ DeWolf, Christopher (2008-01-07). "Axel Morgenthaler on the Quartier des spectacles". Spacing Montreal. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  8. ↑ Magder, Jason (2008-03-18). "Spectrum demolition approved". Montreal Gazette. Canwest. Archived from the original on 2012-11-04. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  9. ↑ DeWolf, Christopher (2009-04-12). "City chops down 67 crabapple trees". Spacing Montreal. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
  10. ↑ "'Quartier des spectacles' will be ready for showtime". CBC.ca. 2008-09-09. Retrieved 2008-10-21.
  11. ↑ Milligan, Mercedes (5 December 2013). "NFB Invites Artists to Celebrate McLaren's 100th". Animation . Retrieved 18 December 2013.
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