Christ-Roi Elementary School

16 Jun 2021

Smith Vigeant Architects and BGLA architecture and urban design in consortium completed the expansion of the Christ-Roi Elementary School, located in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville Borough. The expansion added three new floors, which include: nine classrooms, a kindergarten, a daycare service, and a gym.

Christ-Roi Elementary School

Creating a harmonious composition, the extension incorporates the principles of the existing building and redefines the school's relationship with its context. On the street, a sculpted volumetry announces the new hall, as well as the social and active functions. On the courtyard side, transparency and color are more expressed, offering a personalized character to the institution, respecting its initial pavilion.

Also Read | Shahid and Mira’s Juhu home exhibits industrial style decor with an earthy and cosy vibe

The two buildings are built around a vast central staircase covered in natural light and the radiance of colors. The staircase clearly ensures the new links with the existing school while providing a comfortable and fun socializing space. The entrance hall, by its size and opening, creates a generous and friendly transition space between the neighborhood, the daycare service, and the schoolyard.

In order to have a harmonious implementation, the extension follows the existing building principles: a simple rectangular volume with a brick facade. The proportions of which are dictated by a typical class floor, of standard dimensions, with a central corridor.

Open and interactive place
Christ-Roi Elementary School

The ground floor of the expansion is developed in a more open and dynamic way. It establishes functional and convivial links with the existing building, the schoolyard, the street, and the neighborhood. A series of subtractions sculpt the volume to define significant and functional places, namely: the new reception hall and its large exterior forecourt, the daycare service-connected to both the street and the schoolyard, as well as the gymnasium, also asserting its presence in the neighborhood and in the courtyard.

Also Read | Italian artist’s new collection brings the moon home

Connection and centrality

It is through the central hall that the new and old connect. Located in the center of the newly enlarged school, the hall acts as a hub for traffic and links between floors, between the neighborhood and the schoolyard.

Offering generous transparency between the reception area on Lajeunesse Street and the schoolyard, the hall provides a luminous common area, connecting the corridors of the old and the new. In addition to facilitating orientation within the new wing, this central hall assures a better understanding of the place and its environment.
 

Volumetry, materials, and active designChrist-Roi Elementary School

The facade on Lajeunesse Street affirms the institutional character of the building. To keep a coherent whole, a similar brick facade was chosen. The modulation of the facade marks three major entities of the project in the public space, namely: the new hall and the main entrance to the daycare service, as well as the gymnasium. The ground floor is deliberately more open on the new schoolyard, contributing also to a lively relation at the street level, thus defining a new and generous interactive public space.

Also Read | Five interesting ways to redefine your kitchen

The larger masonry volume, therefore, sculpts the school's social and "active" functions. Like subtractions in a more rigid volume, these functions - hall, daycare, gymnasium, stairs - are expressed in the public space and the courtyard, either in transparency or in color.

On the schoolyard side, transparency and color are more expressed, offering a personalized character to the institution and its active schoolyard. Aluminum panels in different shades of red and orange, create a link with the red color of the existing doors and windows, but also with the surrounding context, which contains "plexes" in brick of different shades of clay. This colorful facade makes its presence a principal element in the interior of the lobby but subtly asserts itself on Lajeunesse Street.

Also Read | Philpotts Interiors celebrates Hawaiian culture through these hospitality environments

Datasheet:
Project name:
Expansion of Christ-Roi Elementary School
Location: Montreal
Client: Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM)
Architects/designers: BGLA | architecture + urban design and Smith Vigeant Architects
Lead Architects: Martin Brière and Daniel Smith
Team: Stéphan Vigeant, Alexandre Savignet, Marianne Lapalme, Sabrina Charbonneau, Jessica Moore
Engineers: EXP
Landscape Architect: Rousseau Lefebvre
Contractor: Blenda Construction
Suppliers: Montréal Briques et Pierres, Henry, Soprema, Multiplis, Revêtement Fortin, Vitrerie Claude, Menuiserie Des Pins, Création N M, CertainTeed, Armstrong, Stonhard, A/D Fire Protection Systems, Moderco
Lighting Designer: Lumen
Project sector: Institutional
Budget: 12,3 M$
Area: 5,501 m2

Project finish date: June 2020

Photograph: Stéphane Brügger