Jeremy Huelin
Architecture

PHI Foundation Contemporary Art Center

2020 - Competition

Montreal, Québec, Canada 

In collaboration with Aishah Alhady

The PHI foundation is an institution alive with new ideas and technology, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is known. Old Montreal is grey and dreary, a place avoided by locals and loved by tourists. Old greystone defines the neighborhood, both aesthetically and functionally, as its state of disrepair requires the constant presence of local stone masons and construction equipment. The project responds to PHI's competition call to insert new galleries into this urban landscape, on a plot riddled with a maze of existing masonry walls.

The proposal guts the existing structures aside from the stone, leaving fragments of the past which, when juxtaposed against PHI’s avant garde collection, are recontextualized and seen anew. The found undulating basement levels form a cafe and exhibition space open to the public, an infrastructure provided by and in dialogue with the ruins of the old. Volumes of private, prearranged program hover above this space as dark masses, allowing controlled lighting conditions in the galleries and forming a terrace from which the river can be viewed. 

The entire site will be cloaked in a form of scaffolding covered in a rippling translucent scrim that would silhouette the institution’s happenings. By taking over the sidewalk, the scaffolding cloaks the foundation and gives the street back to the city, as it will never again be taken up with construction equipment for the buildings. This same system becomes structure, enclosure, and circulation, allowing access to the carved voids of the masses atop the site. 
Using Format