Land and Community Benny Farm Housing | Green Energy Utility, Montréal L’OEUF — Pearl, Poddubiuk Architectes
Florian Jungen
t he original development at Benny Farm was conceived in the ideal of providing modern, comfortable housing for veterans to reinte- grate into civic life. Its serpentine arrange- ment of three story brick buildings resulted in a uniform, loosely grained and small scale residential fabric surrounded by generous, if poorly defined, green spaces. The veterans successfully appropriated these spaces and developed a vibrant community over many decades until the original buildings, with their lack of elevators, could no longer sup- port the needs of the aging population. In 1992, partners at L’OEUF, Daniel Pearl and Mark Poddubiuk, countered CMHC’s plans to demolish much of the site with a proposal for extensive renovations and infill to be occupied by various neighbourhood housing co-ops. When the condo market in Montreal crashed after the sovereignty referendum in 1995, Canada Lands (the new owner of the property) was persuaded to re-examine its plans through a competition for the rede- velopment of the site. Though L’OEUF’s proposal was ultimately unsuccessful, their work was influential in promoting a mixture of new and renovated housing. L’OEUF today is realizing the construction and renovation of 187 new affordable apartments for some of the same neighbourhood co-ops which had supported their original proposal. A coopera- tive housing tradition where autonomously formed groups are assisted in representing their own needs directly to an architect, has been carefully fostered in Montreal over the past several decades.
Built in 1946/47 to house veterans return- ing from the Second World War, the 18 acre development at Benny Farm, in the west end of Montreal, remains one of the largest government housing projects to be undertaken in the history of the Canadian welfare state. By the early 1990’s, at a time when governments were engrossed with cutbacks, privatisation and economic liber- alisation, CMHC was ready to sell off the majority of the property for private condo development. Nearly 15 years later, Benny Farm is about to emerge revitalised, with 445 new and renovated units of sustainably built, afford- able housing being unveiled with buildings on different properties linked by a coopera- tive green energy infrastructure project.
Greening the Infrastruc- ture at Benny Farm has been given a Gold Holcim award (2005) for North America. These awards are con- ducted in partnership with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, MIT, Tongji University, Shanghai, the University of São Paulo, Brazil; and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johan- nesburg. The universities define the evaluation criteria and lead the inde- pendent juries in five regions of the world. See the entire awards program at www.holci- mfoundation.org
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architecture and land
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