THE architecure of the PIERRE LASSONDE PAVILLION: A LIGHT ON CONTEMPORARY ART

See the documentary produced for the inauguration of the Pierre Lassonde pavillion. Archives, interviews, photos of construction site tell the story of an architecture in connection with its environment and its museum mission.

MEet the ARCHITECT SHOHEI SHIGEMATSU

Line Ouellet, director and chief curator of the MNBAQ discuss with Shohei Shigematsu, associate architect from OMA New York about the Pierre Lassonde pavillion, from the international competition to the inauguration of the new building.

The Pierre Lassonde Pavilion

The Pierre Lassonde pavilion of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, opened, June 24 2016, its doors on the Grande Allée in Québec City. Resolutely turned towards the future, the new world-class building, the fourth pavilion in the museum complex, designed by the architectural consortium OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) of New York and Provencher_Roy of Montréal, will transform the venerable eighty-three-year-old institution by bringing together like never before urban life in Québec City and the picturesque landscape of National Battlefields Park.

The new building, 14,900 square metres in surface area, enables the MNBAQ to double its exhibition space and will serve as a light-filled and contemporary gateway to the museum complex, which previously included three pavilions, in addition to providing it with larger spaces for presenting its collections and letting the art and artists from here and abroad shine.

A unique architectural expérience

A glass lobby under a cantilevered roof

Among the spectacular elements of the Pierre Lassonde pavilion, the curtain wall of the main lobby boasts an impressive façade 26.5 metres wide and 12.5 metres tall, sheltered under an imposing cantilevered roof. Glass panels installed perpendicularly at regular intervals, provide a vertical motif to the impressive frontage. This majestic space serves as an interface with the Grande Allée and urban space for the Musée’s public activities. The façade is at once structural, thermal and solar, to meet the seemingly contradictory needs of natural light and thermal insulation imposed by the rigours of the Québec winter.

The lower part of the main lobby, seven metres in height, opens onto four temporary exhibition galleries as well as the inner courtyard, the bookstore-gift shop and the monumental staircase leading to the new auditorium.

The concrete wall in the main lobby, forming the new southwest gable of the presbytery, is another unique architectural element in Québec. It was cast in a single block using formwork built very meticulously horizontally and then raised to a vertical position with a crane.

Two majestic staircases

The monumental staircase rises up three storeys to the heart of the building with a dizzying spiral of three flights made out of four sections of steel. A curved glass balustrade provides all those who take this majestic staircase with a memorable experience.
The Canam Group suspended staircase, connecting the second and third floors, protrudes from the building and offers a view of the park that will take visitors’ breath away and give them the impression of walking between heaven and earth.

A remarkable inner courtyard

The inner courtyard, 500 square metres in size, joins the heritage aspect of the Saint-Dominique presbytery and church – in an English Neo-gothic style – with the new building’s contemporary lines of glass and steel. This partially-covered public space is home to a work by Ludovic Boney, Une Cosmologie sans genèse (A Cosmology without Genesis), created following a public art competition organized by the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications in collaboration with the MNBAQ. The rounded forms of the light grey granite echo one of the elements of Boney’s monumental artwork, an immense sphere made up of 800 aluminum cones.

A terrace overlooking the river

On the third level, on the south side, a terrace with a capacity of 60 people is the site of a bronze sculpture by Patrick Coutu, Le jardin du sculpteur (The Sculptor’s Garden), created thanks to a contribution by the Monique and Robert Parizeau Foundation. The perspective afforded by the terrace lets visitors not only admire the landscape and enjoy the stunning view of the three other pavilions in the museum complex and the St. Lawrence River, but also appreciate the beauty of the green roofs, where 90,000 plants grow. Five kinds of hardy succulent plants create a motif which reproduces the site’s topographical lines.

Glass, glass and more glass

Glass truly envelopes the whole building. Three kinds of glass panels – transparent, translucent and opaque – where meticulously chosen by the architects to play with this impression of inside out, but also to meet the needs of an creating an energy-efficient building that adheres to the principles of sustainable development using thermally-treated anti-UV glass. The architects chose to texture some of the translucent and opaque glass panels. Motifs in the form of points were silkscreened onto them, creating a refined optical effect, following the elements of the building’s imposing steel structure. The insulated walls of the exhibition galleries alternate with the translucent windows, making the building light up at night like a lantern in the park.

Natural light in the Musée

A visit to the pavilion is punctuated by light-filled spaces adjacent to the exhibition galleries. Like the circulation spaces, the exhibition galleries have openings which enable visitors to maintain visual contact with the park, the city and the other buildings in the museum complex during their visit. These perspectives allow natural light to enter, something very rare in an art museum, making visitors’ experience more dynamic and enabling them to remain in constant dialogue with the outdoor environment.

An exemplary multi-party project

The Pierre Lassonde pavilion was made possible by funding from the government of Québec (45.1 million dollars under the Quebec Infrastructure Plan), the government of Canada (33.7 million dollars under the Major Infrastructure Component of the Building Canada Fund) and the private sector (24.6 million dollars), thanks to the commitment and energy of the Fondation du MNBAQ. The private sector’s contribution to this unique project made it the largest cultural patronage project in the history of Québec City. In this sense mention must be made of the founding donation of 10 million dollars by Pierre Lassonde, an inspiring philanthropic gesture, and the exemplary contribution of 5 million dollars by Québec City, and thanks given in the same breath to the hundreds of generous donors across Québec, both businesses and individuals. Under the direction of Line Ouellet, this exceptional building involved the contribution of an expansion team led by Pierre Hébert, the architectural firms OMA and Provencher_Roy, and the construction company EBC.

The Pierre Lassonde pavilion is the result of the first-ever international architectural competition in Québec City and will become the nerve centre of the brand new Arts District. It will bring to the world’s attention not only this district and the city but also the province and the entire country.