The Overground City - La Ville Surterraine
Thesis project, Master in History and Theory of Architecture, McGill University, Montréal, 2003
Related links: McGill University Architecture History and Theory
As an initial interpretation of the site, the mapping strategy focused on what is seen from the summit of Mount Royal rather than the mountain itself. Consequently, the documentation of the mountain intuitively became a recording of the city’s whole "summit"; recurring images of high structures were overlapped, enabling a discovery of the inherent similarities between the "natural" mountain and the surrounding towers. The desire to create a hybrid place with a surreal quality -one that blends the vertigo of the skyscraper with the natural setting of the elevated park- was the main motivation behind the project.
The Overground City uses the mountain as a tool to understand Montreal’s distinct skyline. Analogous to a walk on top of the city’s highest structures, the chosen path subverts the notion of orientation by highlighting significant heights instead of twodimensional points. The project's intention is to "reorient" the user by means of altitude datums. Each chosen "station" seeks to offer a perceptual experience that is an intertwining of physical ascension, vision, and memory. The first point offers a view of the Olympic stadium while standing at the same height; the following locations correspond to principal downtown towers culminating with a self-referent point, the height of the mountain itself. As a cultural landmark that functions primarily at night, the "summit" of Place-Ville Marie was chosen for further development. Its cruciform plan as well as its lighthouse effect was juxtaposed to its immediate counterpart, the adjacent cross. From the corresponding height of 224.4 metres, the view of the skyscraper from the mountain is deliberately made impossible, emphasising the surrounding forest that removes the impression of altitude. After the physical experience of ascension, a visual path begins around the box. This vertical marker is a window that frames views of Mount Royal’s distinctive features and symbols seen from this position. The box contains transparent found images, "spectacular views" taken from the top of Place Ville Marie, which collapse with the "real" view of the mountain at this corresponding height.
A "collage" of the real view and of the printed image occurs, creating a new reality specific to the location. Like "an aperture of unreality that opens magically unto us in a real world", the box/frame is "an imaginary island that floats surrounded by reality on all sides"1. A temporal experience that momentarily splits us from reality and moves us towards a fictional and ideal space/place is achieved by a simultaneous perception of real views, still images, transparencies, translucencies, and reflections. As a device that expresses the reciprocal relationship that exists between the tower and the mountain, the experience becomes one of "defamiliarization" by a deliberate superimposition and blurring of the city’s most visible symbols, thus triggering a new way of understanding the mountain as a true centre-ville.
1. José Ortega y Gasset, "Meditations on the Frame" in
Perspecta 26 (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), 185-190.
Video stills of installation
A ''collage'' of the real view and of the printed image
Plans of Montreal's highest ''structures''