2005. mount royal pavilion
professor: howard davies
“The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it … gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration…”
Frederick Law Olmstead was the visionary founder of landscape architecture. In his great urban spaces such as New York’s Central Park and Boston’s central parks system, Olmstead strove to create spaces of community and calmness. His Mount Royal Park was designed as an urban oasis where the inhabitants of Montreal would be able to recover from the hectic realities of daily life.
Staying true to Olmstead’s vision for his park, this project is designed as a pavilion integrated with nature while recognizing that it is an intervention in itself. It is a space that creates new opportunities to explore the park, linking two paths as it weaves its way through the trees and contours of the land. The green of the pavilion is used to question the viewer’s perceptions of colour. Nature is undeniably associated with green: when the green pavilion is placed amongst the natural tree tones, one realizes the pavilion is one which is an intervention in the landscape and that it is perhaps, not so different from Mount Royal itself, a park artificially landscaped to look natural.
