A program about the state of the architectural profession must address architectural issues and seek to represent the shape of the profession today. However, with architecture moving in so many differing directions, how can one building express the current state of the practice?

Moreover, as we move further into the digital age, new methods of communication (phone, fax, internet) substitute physical communication, allowing workers to operate efficiently and effectively from their homes. Given this reality, how necessary is it to situate one company within one complex?

The concept for this project is the separation of the building into two. It is time to re-evaluate the shape of the institution, in order to find a way to make it within better reach to the public. For a building to address its city, it must be easily accessed. However, with a city the size of Montreal, it is unlikely to find one site, universally accessible for all residents. Dividing the building and locating it atop two linked metro stations begins to address the scale of the city itself. These two buildings will be linked by the underground network, yet still be able to respond to the needs of each site and community.

The program I have identified for the institution has four components: educational, promotional, social and community spaces. Looking closely at the spaces allotted for each component what became evident was a split in the program between spaces that would help the profession reach out to the public and spaces that would help the profession internally. What followed was a clear division between these two spaces: the promotional spaces and the community spaces.

Preliminary conceptual design ideas relate to questions of site and program. The question then becomes how to create two buildings that are still related to one another, without each becoming its own thesis.

I have only begun to explore this idea and have begun by looking at notions similar to Tschumi’s La Villette, linking the buildings by similar appearance or by citing them on a secondary layer to the city’s grid. Additional ideas include relating the buildings by visually linking them to one another similar to the Eiffel Tower and La Defense are connected in Paris.

Featured below are concept sketches and ideas.