E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
Lambert May Our Joy Endure
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-298-5
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80533-298-5
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Kev Lambert (b. 1992) grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. May Our Joy Endure won the Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. Their second novel, Querelle de Roberval, was acclaimed in Quebec, where it was nominated for four literary prizes; in France, where it was a finalist for the Prix Médicis and Prix Le Monde and won the Prix Sade; and Canada, where it was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Lambert lives in Montreal.Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation. He lives in Montreal.
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The media were all of one voice, to an unprecedented degree. Even the least fervent editorial writers predicted a historic turning point for Montreal, the creation of a new urban centre in the years to come for the former industrial zone of Marconi-Alexandra, of Outremont and Parc-Extension, where there would soon be an effusion of condo towers and offices, luxury restaurants, bars, and boutiques, destined for a refined clientele. The no man’s lands would not be there for long. Mile-Ex and La Petite-Patrie had already undergone years of serious transformation, largely due to the installation there of artificial intelligence, video games, and state-of-the-art tech companies; Parc-Ex and the north of Outremont would soon join the party. “It could be a phenomenon on the scale we saw at the start of the 2000s with the arrival of Ubisoft in Mile-End,” exclaimed a commentator on a popular show. A professor emeritus at TÉLUQ University titled an email exchange wherein he tried to persuade the newspaper Le Devoir to publish his open letter, “We have it at last, our great Quebec architect!” Rental prices climbed, that was bound to happen, and some left-leaning journalists were already preparing reports on unfair evictions in the area.
Public consultations took place, businessmen and businesswomen and employers’ associations came to laud the project that was going to benefit the entire community. Gold would rain down on the city. Elected officials from neighbouring districts both griped and rejoiced. Strange things were heard from some odd intervenors who, in their capacity as citizens, expounded esoteric theories concerning the great replacement or the anglicization of Quebec. Not many people from Parc-Extension put in an appearance. People arrived, however, from all other corners of the city to share their little certitudes. College students from the South Shore recited, their voices trembling, a version of Michèle Lalonde’s “Speak White,” altered for the occasion. A philosopher spoke with great feeling and an accent stemming from who knows where (“probably from the hallways of the Université de Montréal,” some murmured, ungenerously). The urbanists said urbanistic things; the UQAM professors, what UQAM professors say; and others cited Barthes, Marcuse, Angela Davis, Clotaire Rapaille, Madame de Sévigné, Beau Dommage, Hubert Reeves, Aurélie Lanctôt, Joseph Schumpeter three times, and once only the old hand Jean-Marc Piotte. Almost all took care to honour the genius, or at least the interest, of the building conceived by Céline Wachowski’s team, whose designs impressed everyone. All by then had at the very least followed the first season of Old House, New House and rejoiced that Montreal would at last bear her signature.
The architectural journals—which had, it must be said, rather snubbed Céline in recent years—were less measured. The experts were unanimous, it was a work of genius, the authentic Céline Wachowski recognized at a glance, on a par with her best years. The Webuy Complex, for many, signalled a new step forward in Ateliers C/W’s production, and perhaps in global architecture. The style confirmed the abandonment of the deconstructivism with which Wachowski had been associated since the 2000s. It reinterpreted the modernist tradition peremptorily rejected by contemporary architects, who at the same time were having a hard time transcending it. You could say that her lines belonged to a new, still-discreet trend, one that revived the values rejected since the triumph of International Style in the 1960s: the beauty of organic forms, a certain classicism in the aesthetic aspirations, modulated by a significant application of the curve, ecological goals, and an involvement in the local history and its context. There were articles on the Webuy Complex in most specialized publications around the world—it would have been a surprise if even the slimmest sheaf of stapled pages from some student association in New Zealand had not published its own assessment. The critics waited eagerly for the next great opus of the Old House, New House host, you didn’t quite know how to assess, in the light of such a distinguished career, this tilt towards television. Charges of corruption in the wake of popular success were all readied for liftoff, targeting the regal robes and ornate eyeglasses of a “star architect” a bit too spendthrift for the conservative mindset. These showed up in a few of the rare dissenting pieces; elsewhere, people rejoiced and bowed down before the indisputable beauty of the monument. People talked, obviously, of the triumphal return to home ground, of the long-awaited Montreal creation, offering a brief rundown of its aesthetic qualities plus an inspiring appreciation of the whole.
It did not resemble most modern structures, yet it could not have taken shape in any other century. The entire complex was imbued with a majesty, a splendour that is not often strived for today. The specialists concluded that its inspiration must have been rooted in the city’s Art Deco tradition. Céline had dared to envisage a building that would cost a fortune in materials: it was also her genius to know how to persuade her clients that the astronomical costs were essential. The Webuy Complex was divided into three sections: the first would house the multinational’s new Montreal headquarters; the second, a park with a state-of-the-art library at its core that would offer free workshops on binary codes and open-source software; the third would consist of a complex of luxury apartments, 20 percent of which would be regulation social housing. The centrepiece of the campus was the large structure that evoked, as an homage to the historical function of the site, a railroad station, open on seven sides and topped with a huge cap housing external terraces as much as ten to thirty metres deep in certain places. Seen from above, the two volumes linked by a footbridge had the appearance of an elongated 8. The base of the main pavilion was an unbalanced heptagonal prism whose ribs spread wider at each level; every building was covered by an impressive roofing that became a terrace on the fifteenth floor. A genuine work of art, this huge wooden garment serving as the roof united and sheltered the two pavilions. The gigantic sculpture seemed to have been conceived as one piece, a flow of fire-retardant wooden beams reinforced with fibreglass. The cross-linked frame formed a latticework covering the entire upper section of the offices; this cap weighed several tons and was supported by sturdy pilasters, yet it seemed to be standing free. The diamonds formed by the lattice occasionally wound themselves around a window or a skylight. Seen from the front, you would have thought that the structure’s blueprint was inspired by the way a liquid pours out onto a table. A caricature that appeared in La Presse, titled “Céline Wachowski at Work,” showed the architect playing with two muffins on which she was trying to balance a banana. The isometric plans revealed the singular shape of the ovoid mass crowning the main pavilion, scaling down and arching into the air to form a promenade whose access was located near the second pavilion, thirty metres farther on. As the volume shrank, it was as if it were being inhaled by the enormous suction cup of the wooden cap, while its glass facades were wrapped round by the lattice all the way to the ground. The openings in this grand armature would generate lovely plays of light.
Pavilions A and B were linked at the ground floor by a wide footbridge, where one would find cafés and places to eat, to play ping-pong, or to recline on deckchairs. The design team had spent hundreds of hours imagining this corridor, it was one of the complex’s most elaborate undertakings; joyous and dogged, Céline and Pierre-Moïse had wanted to make this space the aesthetic heart of the construction. The facades’ wall curtains were enormous, the wooden crossbars (echoing the trellis) gave a warm and traditional feel to the large windows protected by the roof’s acrobatic structure. The passage was always lit. The roof, dotted with skylights, would undulate thirty metres from the ground and would be ornamented with a complex configuration, on which the designers had worked for weeks, composed of variously formed honeycombs. It was thought that the combination of curved lines and obtuse angles would produce a dreamlike effect.
The offices’ entrance would be located in the main pavilion. This vast space would be accessible to the Montreal population, which could use the benches, the small oasis, and the large tables to sip coffee and work surrounded by the company employees in this transparent space (that was Ateliers C/W’s signature), blurring the sharp distinction between interior and exterior, private and public. You could hang out, read, chat in the open air under the canopy, on the green lawns, and in the shaded gardens, or through the wide doors you could access this space that suggested both a greenhouse and an airport concourse. The private part of the headquarters would be found at the very heart of the building and would be traversed through tunnels giving access to a central winter garden in bloom at the end of a large cylinder outfitted with balconies. Large pillars—these, too, honeycombed—would...
