Place des Montréalaises is an urban landscape grand gesture that transforms a covered section of Montreal’s Ville-Marie Expressway into a connective civic space. Located at the critical hinge between Old Montreal and the downtown core, adjacent to City Hall and the Champ-de-Mars historic park, this project was commissioned by the City of Montreal as part of the major revitalization of the Champ-de-Mars Sector. Designed as a reclamation of infrastructure for commemorative placemaking and ecological longevity, it completes a sequence of public spaces above the expressway corridor and establishes the first universally accessible pedestrian link between the Champ-de-Mars metro station and Old Montreal, healing a scar left by decades of urban fragmentation.

Operating as an urban connector and a tribute honouring 21 Montreal women pioneers and victims, the project proposes a new model for what a memorial can be: a living topography in which remembrance unfolds through occupation, season, and use. It also acts as an apology within a broader narrative of memory and justice, acknowledging Marie-Josèphe-Angélique and the enslavement of Black people in Canada. This position emerged directly from an extensive public consultation process, in which citizens called for a space that would be democratic, inclusive, and woven into the rhythms of the city. The result is a 1.8-hectare public ground that holds commemoration, ecology, and urban infrastructure together as a single, inseparable civic act.

A calibrated landscape over active infrastructure

Built entirely over active highway lanes, metro tunnels, and dense underground utilities, the site imposed structural and spatial constraints. Soil depth, tree planting, and structural loading were subject to strict zone-by-zone limits determined by the underlying infrastructure. In response, the project deploys a calibrated, site-specific strategy in which vegetation was treated as essential infrastructure, subject to the same level of coordination and precision as structural and civil systems. The structural system employs a pre-stressed, post-tensioned concrete slab engineered to span this complex three-dimensional field of constraints. Soil volumes, rooting conditions, and species selection were refined zone by zone through microclimatic analyses and structural load assessments.

Areas capable of supporting deeper soil volumes were allocated to canopy trees and forested planting conditions, providing climatic benefits and long-term ecological value. More constrained zones received smaller-calibre plantings and adapted species groupings selected to ensure successful rooting environments despite severe limitations. Nearly 100 trees and tall grasses establish long-term canopy cover, while vegetated areas capture and filter rainwater, reinforcing the role of green infrastructure in climate adaptation within a dense urban core.

Three gestures, one landscape

Three spatial gestures define the landscape. An inclined plane, functioning simultaneously as belvedere and promenade, links the upper and lower levels of the city. Its surface is perforated by 86 circular openings, each planted with indigenous perennial species, 21 varieties in total, one for each of the honoured women, selected to bloom sequentially across the calendar year. The result is a surface that transforms month by month, from the sparse geometric pattern of winter to the layered greens of spring, the full chromatic abundance of summer, and the amber tones of autumn. Commemoration here is not a fixed inscription but a seasonal phenomenon distributed across the entire landscape.

The Miroir des Montréalaises is a polished stainless-steel cylindrical shroud operating as an inverted cloister, open to the sky. Its reflective surface is laser-engraved with the names of 21 Montreal women, projecting letter-shadows across the ground plane and activating the paving with shifting light, time, and weather. The power of their fragmented names is a sculptural homage mirroring back the image of onlookers discovering this revealed story.

A commemorative staircase completes the composition. Engraved with letterforms extracted from the mirror, the monumental stairs create a topographic dialogue between the meadow above and the esplanade below, functioning simultaneously as threshold, gathering space, and civic belvedere.

Credit: Ville de Montréal | ELEMA experts-conseils | Construction Génix | EXP | Ombrage

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