Q:why is it important to Cimaise to use this very beautiful contemporary architecture to mark this era, given that we have just had 20 years of polite contextualism. What is it that you see in your region, or in Quebec, that tells you that it is important to make that break now? A: Because of its French origins and being a French speaking minority located at the border of the US, I think Quebec is very open to the world, particularly Montreal, a cosmopolitan city with a strong european sensibility. It’s a way to preserve our identity while becoming a citizen of the world. Architecture follows this trend, which is why there is a lot of neo- modernist architecture directly inspired from what’s done in Europe is being built in Quebec right now, mainly in Montreal. But there is a big difference between Montreal and the other cities of Quebec...even with Quebec City. Again, the muli-ethnical culture found in Montreal is quite unique and the density of population there is much higher than in the rest of the province: there’s a lot more people there open and willing to new ways of doing. These factors give more possibilities for experimentation in that city. Sherbrooke is about 160 kilometres east of Montreal, in the Eastern Townships. It takes about an hour and a half to travel by car between the two cities — very close neighbours, but two very different personalities. Sherbrooke is much closer to the conservative spirit of the northeastern states of the US than to the openness found in Montreal. This can be easily seen in the recent architecture built in Sherbrooke: bad traditional New England or Victorian style imitations. There is a strong nostalgia for the past and a kind of political correctness that rejects contemporary
references. It’s a city that lives in its architectural past. A lot of it is probably the result of the ignorance of architectural culture, this subject being absent from popular interests and cultural teachings found in schools—a major problem present in all of Quebec. Architecture is the ‘enfant pauvre’ of cultural education. And what is there to say when we know that culture is often discarded as an unimportant accessory and is certainly not a priority of the education system. I’m not sure about the rest of Canada, but I suspect that we are not alone in this situation. We at CIMAISE believe that we have to react to this. Call it ideal or illusion, but we think that as architects we can change things — we cannot be indifferent, which is why we always try to introduce contemporary architecture in what we do. It’s a way of saying what we are today as a society and
of showing what is possible and where architecture is at the begining of the 21st century. It’s opening the cultural boundaries of our city to what’s taking place in the rest of the world. And it’s contributing, we hope, to the architectural education of the people, whether by publicly talking and explaining contemporary architecture or in debate when one of our buildings is the talk of the town because of it’s difference. It is not an easy task and we are deceived often, but as architects who respect our profession and what we studied for, we couldn’t do anything else. And when we are succesful in our attempts to produce good contemporary architecture without too much compromise, we are proud and think that all the efforts for that little step forward was worth it in the end.
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