Located in Snowdon neighbourhood, a residential area of the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, a new park will honour the memory of Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, writer, university professor, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
With the exception of the surrounding new high-rise buildings and the presence of an erratic rock, the Parc Elie-Wiesel site presented no fixed elements to serve as a starting point or constraint for the design. This particular condition was also an opportunity to design a space that would be completely modulated to the site’s needs. The absence of topography, and the possibility of creating one, was the starting point for thinking about the park’s layout. A search for precedents in landscaping projects that shape the land led us to Vauban’s artificial topographies. Intended for a specific military purpose, the triangulated forms and pure geometries of this 17th-century French engineer combined nature, geometry and construction in a unique way.
In the design concept, Vauban’s triangular shapes persist, but are not encircled by trenches. The idea of embankments is adapted to create a topography offering gentle slopes that can be adapted. Inclined planes emerge from the ground to energize circulation and define intimate spaces. The inspiration of Vauban’s stars is transformed into diamonds. The shapes enliven the site like precious fragments of grass and stone. The composition of the space becomes a set of pure lines, like precious stones cut with precise edges.
