The Nuns' Island gas station (French : Station-service de l'Île-des-Sœurs) is a modernist-style building on Nuns' Island in Montreal, Quebec. It was built as a filling station in 1969 from a project of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Closed for several years, it was later converted to a community centre. [1] [2]
It was the first gas station on the Island of Montreal commissioned by Imperial Oil. [3] It was also one of four buildings that Mies designed on Nuns' Island. [4]
When the filling station closed in 2008, [5] the borough of Verdun transformed the building into a community arts centre, La Station. [4] [6] Eric Gauthier was the lead architect on the project, which saw the two glass pavilions rebuilt to their original 3,000- and 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) sizes. [7] The community centre opened in February 2012. [8]
La Station is a community centre for teens and people over 50 years of age. The two main buildings are called the salle blanche (English: white room) and salle noire (English: black room), after their floor colours. The original glass-enclosed attendant's booth serves as a display case of Mies' and the building's history, with the former fuel dispensers marked by ventilation shafts. The centre uses geothermal energy. [9]
