The Dimensional Door

Imagine if you could walk through the doorway in one place and arrive elsewhere on the other side. Could we create a practical and easily replicable device that would allow for safe and simple instantaneous travel from one place to another regardless of the distance? How could the two doorways be connected? Once connected, what would you see inside the doorframe? Could you get chopped in half whilst passing through? Would such travel affect your body chemistry, DNA, atoms, etc.? Would differences in air pressure from both sides create gusts of wind or other differential phenomena? These are a few of the questions that quickly come to mind.

The previously invisible was made visible. To put this idea into perspective, the telephone has been around for less than 150 years. What was it that brought us to discover that we could project our voices across vast distances? Humans began to fly in the 1870s with the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon followed by the first ‘heavier than air’ flight by the Wright brothers in 1903. In the 1890s, the wireless was another strange inspiration that mobile telephone users do not even think twice about today, never mind high definition multi-channel satellite services. In less than 200 years of human evolution, all of these impossible ideas have become commonplace.

Gravity: what is this force that we have only superficially harvested for hydroelectric power generation? In what other way could this puzzling force be harnessed? How could it be related to magnetism and time? Could this all be explained by the fifth or another dimension? These are very big questions that physicists have been studying for a number of centuries.

Ideas about dimensional travel have been around for a long time. H.G. Wells published, The Time Machine, in 1895. Instantaneous travel is explored further in stories such as Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 book, A Wrinkle in Time, or the way the witches and wizards in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, first printed in 1997, are able to travel from one fireplace to another. The film, Stargate, released by MGM in 1994, also contributes to the canon of teleportation stories not to mention Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek from the 1960s. Nonetheless, the question remains how to adapt these ‘fantasies’ into a real world application?

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Montréal Architecture (No.6)

Faubourg des Récollets
Griffintown
Cité du multimedia de Montréal

Darling Brothers Foundry
Date: 1889, recycled in 2002
Address: 735, rue Ottawa
Architects: J.R. Gardiner, recycled by Atelier In Situ
Materials: brick, concrete, glass and rust

This building is the Quartier Éphémère’s (www.quartierephemere.org) multidisciplinary arts/culture space and the Cluny Art Bar.

Once woodland to the west of Old Montréal at the base of the hill leading to Montréal’s modern city centre, the Faubourg des Récollets has evolved several times over its history. The western gate of Old Montréal was in fact the Porte des Récollets located at Notre-Dame and McGill streets. Griffintown, was located south of des Récollets between rue William and the canal. The lower lying Griffintown often flooded before the construction of the Canal Lachine (1821-1825). During Montréal’s industrial revolution in the second half of the 19th century, the mainly Irish residents of Griffintown moved out of the sector as it was taken over by manufacturing and warehouses in proximity to the new Canal.

Up until the 1930’s Depression, the Faubouge des Récollets – Griffintown was the site of many manufacturers, foundries, warehouses, wholesalers, retailers and a few residents. From the Depression on, the area began its decline. In 1933, CN constructed the elevated railway link into the new Central Station (1938-1943). This ‘split’ the Faubourg des Récollets (east) from Griffintown (west). After the St-Lawrence seaway opened in 1950, the Canal Lachine slowly declined to finally close in 1968. The canal reopened for recreational use in 2002. Another contributor to ongoing decline of the area was the addition of the Autoroute Bonaventure in 1965 and later the Autoroute Ville-Marie to the north.

Since the mid-nineties, Montréal’s southern gate has experienced a renaissance starting with the dot-com boom resulting in the conversion of many of the old industrial spaces into lofts, studios and offices for high-tech companies. The Ville de Montréal created the Cité du multimédia (www.citemultimedia.com) in 1998 to encourage the regeneration of the neighbourhood where new buildings were also added to attract more information technology and multimedia firms.

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Montréal Architecture (No.5)

La Maison de l’arbre

During those brilliantly sunny but freezing cold Montréal winter days, there is still a way to appreciate the sun’s rays. When I was a student at McGill, I would sit in the south-west facing window in the entrance hallway of the Blackader-Lauterman Library. The sun would stream in and I would bask in the light of this otherwise uninteresting passage. I’d sit on the window’s sill and feel my back absorb the orange-yellow solar heat. Climbing out of my hole into these moments of mid-winter warmth was the closest I would come to a holiday in the south.

I always find myself scouting out cafés that have sunny windows for those needed vitamin D breaks. I order café au lait and break a sweat under the combined heat of the coffee and sun whilst dreaming about the stifling humidity of Montréal summers and the joy of walking in T-shirt, shorts and sandals at midnight.

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Montréal Architecture (No.4)

Au cours du siècle dernier, nous avons identifié de grandes tendances telles que « l’historicisme », « le modernisme », « le brutalisme », etc. La construction « verte » n’est pas une formule écologique à suivre ni une mode parmi d’autres. Elle va au-delà d’un bâtiment et englobe aussi le quartier, la ville et le territoire où un projet se situe. Dans ce contexte, c’est donc à nous la relève, de contribuer à l’émergence d’une société saine sur les plans social, économique et écologique. C’est autant une question de bâtir une culture écologique que de construire une ville.

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Montréal Architecture (No.3)

When the elevator was invented in 1853 by Elias Otis the possibilities of building tall started to come together. Several technological developments converged at the end of the nineteenth century including electric light (1879) and steel frame with exterior curtain wall construction. The first skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building (1883-85) in Chicago by William Le Baron Jenney. In Montréal, the evolution of the skyscraper is documented through a number of buildings. There are three basic pre Second World War skyscraper generations. The first generation began in 1888 with the New York Life Insurance building at 511, place d’Armes. At eight storeys, it was Montréal’s first skyscraper. Given the new height potential of skyscrapers, the 1901 building code limited these buildings to ten storeys. This began the second generation.

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Montréal Architecture (No.2)

Sidewalk on rue St-Antoine

Stone, trees, bike racks, benches and specially designed streetlights in Montréal’s Quartier international.

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Montréal Architecture (No.1)

Musée Pointe-à-Callière

350, place Royale
Angle de la Commune
Vieux-Montréal (Québec)
www.pacmuseum.qc.ca

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Winter Solstice 2006

That time of year when the sun is lowest on the horizon and we wonder if spring will ever come again. December 21st, the winter solstice is anchored in the very connection of our planet to the heavens.

Low sun, long shadows, and short days. Bundled up, we walk on a dormant land.

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Les toits verts : profitons d’un territoire sous-exploité !

Les toits plats font partie de la culture de construction à Montréal et dans bien d’autres villes du Québec. Au lieu de maintenir des déserts de goudron et de gravier sur nos toits, nous pouvons y faire pousser des champs, des potagers et des jardins. Au-delà des avantages de climatisation naturelle, de gestion des eaux de pluie et de prolongation de la vie du toit, les toitures végétales sont simplement belles.

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Free Rain

The human body is largely composed of water and its intimate connection to the blue planet doesn’t stop with the flush of a toilet.

It comes from above and is often a source of grief: too much or not enough. Today it is pouring and 4C, the temperature where water is at its highest molecular density. Water is a big item for cities. Not only do we have to find a source, clean it up for potable use and then distribute it, but we also have to dispose of it afterwards. Black or grey, waste water treatment is a costly and difficult issue. Just think of cities like Halifax and Victoria that dump their untreated wastewater directly into the ocean. Although Montréal has a large and sophisticated sewage treatment plant at the east end of the island, the City still averages about 22 discharges of untreated sewage directly into the Saint Lawrence River each year. When it rains too much the system cannot process all of the water and thus the problem is passed on to the fishes, whales, and other cities downstream. Yes, that is the water from our homes, hospitals, factories, rooftops, and polluted streets.

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Urban Shadow

De l’aube au crépuscule, from dawn to dusk, we do not often notice how the sun plays on surfaces and enters buildings. Of course, when it is too hot, we close the blinds to keep it out. We also enjoy that vitamin D break on a winter’s day when our faces absorb the week rays whilst walking on the sunny side of the street. The greatest source of free energy on earth is our sun and not only does it warm the planet and grow our vegetables; it also freely animates our urban landscape in shadows and shifting perspectives.

Unlike the fixity of cast concrete, cast shadows move as the earth, like a moth to a flame, winds its way around the sun. The sun’s azimuth and altitude change over the four seasons. The cycle expresses itself with ever longer or shorter shadows depending upon which solstice we are approaching. Our shadows get shorter as we move towards the summer and longer as we head into winter.

Sundials record the earth’s progress from hour to hour and the length of the shadow records our progress from season to season. From horizon to zenith, our eyes instinctively pick up Helius’ solar signals from the world around us.

Steel Staircase, Montréal

This simple staircase caresses its brick façade. The angle and depth of the shadow silently tell us about the time of day and season: thoughtful reminders about our place in time.

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Le militantisme local

Loin des manifestations chaotiques des années 60/70, aujourd’hui, le militantisme local répond à la complexité de nos milieux urbains avec une sophistication de plus en plus accrue. Dans notre contexte actuel, il faut faire plus que lancer des revendications. Il faut plutôt sensibiliser la population et les instances de pouvoir, soit politique ou économique.

À Montréal, au printemps 2002, dans le Plateau Mont-Royal, un quartier en pleine mutation, un nouveau mouvement populaire de citoyens a vu le jour. Ce groupe s’est inspiré de l’idée de mettre la personne avant la voiture en réponse à l’omniprésence des voitures polluantes en ville. Mais l’enlèvement des voitures ne faisait qu’une partie du plan de ce qui est devenu le Comité de citoyens Mont-Royal Avenue Verte.

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Bony City

This is the variety of stone that you pass when you walk down rue Saint-Jacques (Saint James Street) in Old Montréal. Each façade has its own textures and rhythms. Stones are the bones of the earth. They are solid and timeless. I still remember my secondary school geography class teaching me about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock. I had no idea then how these old boulders could influence the character of a building, a street, or a neighbourhood.

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Crunchy Leaves

It is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

– page 35, Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, translation by William Weaver, 1972.

Autumn five years ago: I was finishing my master’s thesis in architecture at McGill University. It marked an important stage in the evolution of my ideas about architecture, urbanism, culture, and the environment. Although I was born in Vancouver, I chose to live in Montréal and over the past ten years I have become very implicated in the workings and non-workings of this city. As Calvino points out, it is not a question of happy or unhappy Montréal; rather, my implication in the city is about contributing to its evolution in a way that inspires us and connects us to our surrounding life-world. This is the basis of my ongoing definition of “ecosensual” and I’m planning to use the pages of Urbanphoto to further explore this theme.

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