Social Architecture for the Mind, the Heart, and the Body

ACDF Architecture, a Montreal-based, globally-inspired design practice creating experiential buildings that deliver lasting social impacts, unveils Complexe Sportif et Culturel Collège Notre-Dame, a new social epicentre in the beating heart of a campus founded in 1869.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Collège Notre-Dame advocates education that seeks the perfect balance between mind, heart, and body to prepare students to contribute positively to society. Given the significant increase in the number of students in recent decades, the sports and cultural facilities at Collège Notre-Dame made it difficult for the institution to maintain its mission, which includes a strong focus on sports and an abundance of cultural activities. Collège Notre-Dame commissioned ACDF to design a new sports center that would bring its student population together and have a positive impact on the daily lives of all students. Accordingly, the new complex is positioned in the heart of the campus, at the crossroads of all pedestrian circulations connecting student life between the institution’s legacy educational buildings and its outdoor sports facilities. Imbued with a certain architectural sobriety, the new sports and cultural center is windowed onto the exterior along its entire periphery, creating constant visual relationships between passers-by and users, and thereby promoting activities taking place within.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Heritage first

Collège Notre-Dame forms part of Montreal’s Mont-Royal Heritage Site, a protected area comprising Mont-Royal Park, cemeteries, institutions, residential neighborhoods, and some of the largest green spaces on the island. That designation placed heritage at the heart of the intervention, echoing the thoughtful design philosophy of ACDF. Collège Notre-Dame’s expansive campus includes legacy heritage buildings that reflect varying eras of English and French-inspired architecture, including initial buildings built in the 1880s, and subsequent expansions completed in 1929. Major extensions were again added in the 1960s, infusing modernist architectural language into the campus. Remarkably, the eclectic architectural styles have evolved as a set of harmonious buildings, and ACDF endeavored to continue that legacy within the structure of a contemporary architectural concept.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Opening a Window onto Campus Life

ACDF applied a horizontal language to the design of a massive rectangular building, with an upper level characterized by an opaque façade of anthracite-coloured aluminium panelling that conceals the facility’s mechanical systems in its corners. The rectangular upper level protrudes beyond the borders of a lower level, offering protection against direct sunlight and the elements, while enabling penetration of abundant natural light into the building.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

The lower level features a fully-glazed façade of curtain walls, providing direct views from the pedestrian level to overlook activities taking place inside of the new facility. Rounded corners create an oval shape for the fully-glazed lower level, injecting a greater sense of fluidity into circulation patterns around the building. Directly above the main entrance to the complex, the aluminium panelling of the upper-level blends seamlessly into darkly tinted glass, highlighting activities unfolding in the complex’s multifunctional rooms, including dance, improvisation, theatre, fencing, and more.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Seamless Integration of a Massive Structure

Built on the Sacré-Cœur courtyard, on a downward slope descending from the campus’s main buildings, across the courtyard, and down to the football field, ACDF leveraged the challenging topography to excavate the site and erect half of the building underground, where two double gymnasiums and locker rooms are housed. In addition to being cost efficient, minimizing the building envelope helped soften the intrusion of the massive new complex by rendering it to a more human scale that is less imposing.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

The uneven topography also presented an opportunity to erect a natural stone wall along the lowest levels of the building, directly beneath the fully-glazed façade. The selection of natural stone pays homage to the architectural styles and palette of the surrounding heritage buildings, while further integrating the new complex as a central and unifying element of the campus. An expansive green roof caps it all off, with high visibility from all of the surrounding classrooms and study halls of the college.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

A Source of Pride

The new complex adds a 21st century chapter to the institution’s illustrious history, with an infusion of contemporary design and materiality that blends with existing buildings to unify the sprawling campus. Beyond a typical architectural response, the new complex contributes to the social fabric of Collège Notre-Dame in a significant way. That social aspect played a major role in ACDF’s approach and decision-making throughout the project, ensuring a final product that will deliver positive impacts for the daily lives of students for years to come.

ACDF Architecture

With a portfolio of ambitious and design-savvy commercial, residential, hospitality, interior, and master planning projects, ACDF is recognized as one of Canada’s most forward-thinking architecture firms. Under the direction of Maxime-Alexis Frappier, Joan Renaud, and Etienne Laplante Courchesne, the firm’s harmonious designs of large-scale projects have received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of their progressive approach to a new generation of meaningful and impactful buildings.