Trapping Scale - An Urban Gallery
Parc Extension - Montreal , Canada
Parc Extension - Montreal , Canada
An unusual site marked by a fading stock of medium industrial buildings disrupts the scale within an adjacent residential neighborhood of 'Parc Extension' in Montreal. The site runs the length of Rue Marconi and visibly forming a deep terminus with the neighboring community intersecting at Ave. Alexandra. The existing rail line is anticipated to be decommissioned and is then co-opted into the project scope; relieving the otherwise shallow site with critical dimensional depth.
The program of central gallery in tandem with artist residence idealizes the budding creative population local to Parc Extension, and would intend to give the transitioning neighborhood a direction of growth and identity.
The value of this studio exercise was in crafting a method to mediate the residential edge entrenched in the larger scale adjacent zones. The interest in Italian medieval squares illuminated the application of plaza form to balance the scale with public space. Studying Piazza Signoria, its dominant object space about its perspectival organization; and Santa Croce as an example of an irregular perimeter about a formal object. The project uses the square as a trapping device that mediates scale and liberates the orientation of an internal object..the gallery.
