Governor General's Medals in Architecture — 2016 Recipient | Royal Architectural Institute of Canada

Governor General's Medals in Architecture — 2016 Recipient

The Head Office of Caisse Desjardins de Lévis
Lévis
QC
Award Category: 
Governor General’s Medals in Architecture

Consortium
ABCP architecture /
Anne Carrier architecture

Lead design architect(s): 

Anne Carrier, FIRAC
Vadim Siegel

The new head office of Caisse Desjardins de Lévis is located at the heart of the birthplace of the Desjardins credit union movement. Along the east-west axis, a zinc-clad urban façade provides verticality and movement. The main façade on Boulevard Alphonse-Desjardins brings us back to the human scale, with access to Old Lévis. The façade facing the park opens out onto the site’s majestic trees, and features suspended wooden cubes that house areas for members. The two indoor and outdoor traffic flow areas define the experiential and functional trajectories navigating, confining and revealing the building’s various spaces and functions.

Jury Comment(s): 

"This exceptional office building, developed within the discipline of commercial structures designed for financial institutions, breaks new ground in its organization and detailing. Most of the space is designed for large open office layouts, but the designers have clustered the circulation and enclosed spaces along the north face of the building to create a zone of energy and contact. Triple glazing provides acoustic privacy for the meeting spaces while creating a lively and special identity for the facade. The jury applauds the clarity and refinement of this unique building, and the clients who supported it."

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Photos: Stéphane Groleau

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