During hot summer days, the sealed environment of a city raises the temperature. Especially asphalt-paved areas reinforce that effect. In Montreal, the Arcadia Studio designed “La Vague”, a project which converts five parking lots into a refreshing public space for relaxing and socialising. 74 wooden frames are arranged around the urban hideout, creating the illusion of a wave hitting the pavement.
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Temporarily “Placottoir”
The designers were inspired by two sources: The first one is the invention of the Parklet in San Francisco. A very small park, which usually turns expendable parking lots into places with seating and planting. The parklets improve the sojourn quality of its urban environment and encourages socialisation and relaxation between the people. In Montreal, these areas are known as “Placottoir” – a place to chat. The second inspiration came from Europe and has not yet established itself on the American continent: Misters. This device consists of small nozzles, which release steam, cooling down the surrounding air by approximately five degrees Celsius.
Energizing Passage
“La Vague”, the French word for “Wave”, is 22 metres long and two and a half metres wide. The 74 wooden frames are placed around the passage and are offset in a three-degree interval. Together with its turquoise painting, the twisted arrangement is a reminiscent of a wave. 45 nozzles are attached to the frames and release the refreshing steam into the sculpture. Within the wave, people can sit on benches and enjoy their time between planted anchors. “La Vague” adds a playful and social component to the dreary environment of a grey streetscape and generates an action-reaction effect on pedestrians.
The Place des Festivals in Montréal, Canada provides an unusual sight these days: 13 large illuminated loops have occupied the famous public space. These objects are part of the annual Luminothérapie which is Quebec´s largest competition for temporary public art installations. Most notable feature is the participation of pedestrians, who can play with the loops. The loops are a giant zoetropes, which is an optical toy, that was the ancestor of the animated film. Once activated, flickering images of 13 inspiring fairy tales come to life and can be watched by the participants.
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How does the loop works?
Each loop is two metres in diameter and can be entered by two people, who can activate the installation by pulling levers. A spinning cylinder, with spokes in its running tread, adopt the function of a zoetrope and making a series of still images appear to move. Together with music, the loop creates an animation of fairy tales around the watchers. By changing the tempo at the levers the speed of the moving images and the music can be influenced. The animations are also recognizable from distance and together with video projections on two adjacent buildings, the place is illuminated by flickering lights and images.
The creators
The Luminothérapie is an association of artists, which presents interactive and captivating installations in Montréal every winter. With their work, they want to stimulate creativity in urban design and digital art. Olivier Girouard and Jonathan Villeneuve, the creators of the loops, want to encourage the people’s imagination and participation in public space.
Architect Jean Verville wins coveted Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ invited competition for the development of Museum Avenue. During summer 2016, his elegant installation Dance Floor offers a lively landscape animated by an exuberant trompe-l’oeil. With Verville’s proposal the participants experiment movement, both free and structured by the course, to surrender to the pleasure of an impulsive action or casual wandering. Welcoming varied and unforgettable performances, Dance Floor shines a new dynamism to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ area.
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With paving made of more than 5,000 footprints, Dance Floor installation composed a stunning mosaic reminiscent of hammered gold, nod to the theme of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition Pompeii. The gesture, of an equally unexpected as sensational simplicity, traces some chaos proper to crowd and invite passersby to improvise steps on this huge dancing floor. Shaping a new urban intersection, architect Jean Verville transforms the pedestrian street into a giant interactive activity enlivening downtown Montreal with formidable improvised dances, while encouraging the visitor to build its customized tour within the works of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Sculpture Garden.
The architect
The practice of Jean Verville is on the fringe of mainstream architecture. For each proposal, architecture, design, museum installation or object, the architect uses the architectural promenade as material to develop the spatial qualities of his experiments. In addition to its award-winning practice and his significant international publications Jean Verville continues his investigations on architectural design process through a PhD at Université du Québec à Montréal.
Client: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Typology: Urban installation
Location: Montreal, Canada
Superficy: 3.000 square feet
Year of conception: 2015
Year of construction: 2016
