  Museo Castelvecchio à Vérone, par l'architecte italien Carlos Scarpa, le maître incontesté de la restauration.
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Renaître Beyond technical and economical considerations, there is much more to the restoration of an historic building. Of course, recuperation and restauration of existing buildings is more economic and ecologic solution than an entirely new construction. Of course the smaller scale of the project and the possibility to divide it into disticnt phases allows an easier absorption of the space by the market than the thousands of square feets of a new office tower. Of course it is important to preserve our cities architectural patrimony and Montreal is full of those well built old commercial and industrial buildings that waits to be reused and restored. But beyond those facts, there is a poetic dimension to a restoration. A dimension where history enriches the present and the future. A dimension where the value of the whole is more than the sum of its components. Where the program and the existing buildings fuses to give more than an old building with a new use, but a new entity enhanced by the past that will radiate over the whole area. To resume, my hypothesis is the following: How do you restore, reuse and add to an old building or a group of buildings, not only in technical terms, but also poetic, in order to enhance all the projetc's components. In more precise terms, the subject of my design thesis is a small multimedia complex, composed of existing buildings and new constructions in the Faubourg des Récollets. This complex could house small and medium expanding enterprises, giving them acces to facilities they could not afford if they were by themsleves, but also to regroup them in an environment that helps creation, comercial exchanges and allows them to conduct buisness. The site, at the southern extremity of the Cité du Multimedia on de la Commune street, would also be perfect for a small multimedia interpretation center for the public and scholars.
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