Last week, Le Cathcart Restaurants et Biergarten officially opened its 35,000-sf food court within the esplanade at Place Ville Marie, a revitalized central mall in downtown Montreal, Quebec.
The food court—whose 15 kiosks have seating for more than 1,000 patrons and include three restaurants—is adjacent to a shopping center, and positioned under a 630-sm (6,782-sf) all-glass roof that is part of the Place Ville Marie’s new entrance pavilion. The 45x15-m roof—the first project in Quebec for the façade construction specialist Seele, and its fourth in Canada—is 1.2m above ground level.
The roof component, which was completed in December 2018, consists of 15m-long by 2.5m-wide insulating glass panels weighing up to 5.6 tons each. Eight-ply laminated glass beams, also 15m long, support the glass panels. The corbels supporting the beams are hidden in the walls, presenting the illusion that the roof is hovering above ground.
The roof is bookended by entrance canopies that cantilever up to 4.2m beyond the entrance facades. The canopies are supported by 14-ply glass beams. The roof took six months to complete, and had to deal with a confined jobsite space and, in its latter stages, Montreal’s wintry weather. It required a 2.5-ton vacuum lifter with 60 suction cups to place the glass units. To support a mobile crane for installing the glass, the existing structure needed to be strengthened.
Part of the 1,000-seat food court underneath Place Ville Marie's glass roof.
The client, real estate investment firm Ivanhoè Cambridge, presented this project for the first time last May at Façade Tectonics in Toronto. “Every project has its own challenges, and the handling of extra-large glass needed careful preparation,” recalls Michael Steinhuelb, Vice President of Seele Canada. “Quality, safety, and timeliness [were] our prime considerations in installation, and we learned a lot about extreme winter installation … that we can apply to other projects.”
The building team for Place Ville Marie’s revitalization includes Sid Lee Architecture (which conceived the project with A5 Hospitality) and Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes (architects), Pomerleau (GC), NCK (main contractor), and NCK (engineer) BPA (electromechanical engineer), Lightmotion (lighting consultant), and BC2 (landscape architect). Seele provided design, production, and installation of the glass roof and canopies. The $200 million revitalization of the esplanade is part of Projet Nouveau Centre, Ivanhoe Cambridge’s $1 billion-plus vision for downtown Montreal, which is consolidating four major projects: Place Ville Marie (originally co-designed by I.M. Pei and Henry N. Cobb), Montreal Eaton Centre, the 27-story office building Maison Manuvie, and the 950-room Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
Related Stories
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Engineering Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Fluor, Arup, Day & Zimmermann top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest engineering firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Architecture Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Gensler, Perkins+Will, NBBJ top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest architecture firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
2014 Giants 300 Report
Building Design+Construction magazine's annual ranking the nation's largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the U.S.
| Jul 17, 2014
A new, vibrant waterfront for the capital
Plans to improve Washington D.C.'s Potomac River waterfront by Maine Ave. have been discussed for years. Finally, The Wharf has started its first phase of construction.
| Jul 17, 2014
A harmful trade-off many U.S. green buildings make
The Urban Green Council addresses a concern that many "green" buildings in the U.S. have: poor insulation.
| Jul 7, 2014
7 emerging design trends in brick buildings
From wild architectural shapes to unique color blends and pattern arrangements, these projects demonstrate the design possibilities of brick.
| Jul 7, 2014
A climate-controlled city is Dubai's newest colossal project
To add to Dubai's already impressive portfolio of world's tallest tower and world's largest natural flower garden, Dubai Holding has plans to build the world's largest climate-controlled city.
| Jul 3, 2014
Gehry edits Canadian skyscraper plan to be 'more Toronto'
After being criticized for the original tower complex, architect Frank Gehry unveils a new design that is more subtle, and "more Toronto."
| Jul 2, 2014
SHoP designs what would be Brooklyn's tallest building
JDS Development partners with SHoP to construct a 70-story building at 775-feet tall, unprecedented for downtown Brooklyn.
| Jun 30, 2014
Research finds continued growth of design-build throughout United States
New research findings indicate that for the first time more than half of projects above $10 million are being completed through design-build project delivery.
