Atelier TAG et Jodoin Lamarre Pratte Architectes en consortium
Katsuhiro Yamazaki, Atelier TAG
Occupancy: 2016
Construction Budget: $23.7 million
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) campus is an assemblage of five architecturally distinct pavilions, each evoking its own era and providing a commentary on the role the institution has played in society. Addressing the expanded role of the 21st-century museum, the Pavilion for Peace is structured around the event stair. The architecture positions the visitors, rather than the artifacts, at the centre of the museum experience. The intimate scale of the pavilion allows the MMFA to build upon a process of cultural democratization and to realize a museum that operates as an accessible and engaged cultural agora.
Photo: Marc Cramer
Photo: Pawel Karwowski
Photo: Pawel Karwowski
Photo: Olivier Blouin
Photo: Pawel Karwowski
"The Pavilion for Peace beautifully and effectively fulfills its purpose of providing visitors with galleries, an all-in-one stairway, corridor, and linear public living room that winds its way up to the building. It works on both sides of its walls, providing a generous zone for gallery-goers within, while visually projecting its energy and activity to the city outside. The building is a sensitive insertion into the urban fabric, with a jogged façade that addresses the scale of the adjacent historic houses. The cool, abstract glass-and-aluminum palette of the exterior is balanced with the warm, natural wood of the interior. Its generosity of space and its strategic spatial zoning facilitates both efficient visitor movement and optional socialization. Visible from a block away and transforming into an illuminated lantern at night, the pavilion offers a transparent and welcoming transition from the gallery to the city."