Design: Intégral
Artistic Directors: Ruedi Baur + Jean Beaudoin, Intégral
In Collaboration With: Bureau des festivals et des événements, City of Montréal
Date: 2010
As part of its Lighting Plan, the Quartier des spectacles is exploring the possibilities of light for creating signage and expressing identity. A recent pilot project experiments with projecting light onto the pavement to mark the urban landscape.
This intervention, realized as part of the Montreal All-Nighter, reinforces the brand image of the cultural heart of the metropolis by bringing together light and graphic design.
The system shows pedestrians the way to major nearby venues, and highlights their presence in the Quartier des spectacles, as they cross at the intersection of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Denis streets. The preliminary installation, still an experimental prototype, was made up of projectors suspended from towers and synchronized with the existing traffic lights at the intersection. The projections illuminated only the crosswalks, clearly indicating safe pedestrian passages across the street. Its a unique way to show visitors the ebullient cultural activity in the Quartier des spectacles, right on the neighbourhoods main drag of Sainte-Catherine Street.
Projecting light onto the ground has been one of the central elements of the Quartier des spectacles Lighting Plan since its launch in 2006. Light illuminates the sidewalk to provide signage, reinforce identity and create a lively aesthetic outside more than fifteen cultural venues. The double line of dots is the neighbourhoods common signature, rolling out a playful and dynamic red carpet for visitors and indicating the presence of a cultural venue at the pedestrian scale.
Design: Brian Richer and Kei Ng
Client: Castor Design
Date: 2010
Reclaimed fire extinguishers are cut to varying lengths, and wet painted to create these striking pendant lights. The variation of proportions and colour produce a tremendous range of designs without complicating production. Green and beautiful.
Pulled from the iconic signage of Honest Ed’s on Bloor, this light sculpture will act as an object of both contemplation and spectacle. It will speak to everyone’s behavioral aspirations, but will also pay homage to the benevolent and honest Ed Mirvish, who died last year at the age of 92. Shown are the concept drawing, and the actual work lit up on the evening of Nuit Blanche.
This distinctive tandem lighting solution is part of a family of public furniture designed for Quartier international de Montréal. According to Dallaire, the aesthetic vocabulary of the collection was “inspired by the contrast of the circle with the absolute vertical rectitude”. In that sense, these street lights are arguably the centerpiece of the collection.
Materially, the designs are unified through the use of aluminum – extruded, sand-cast, die-cast and machined. Here, aluminum extrusions house a central post, to which standard signage, traffic lights and other elements are fixed. The seams between the extrusions nicely accommodate these protruding fixtures.
