Philippe Fournier_Portfolio_2023

The design for the second location of the Montreal Holocaust
Memorial Museum was open to competition in 2022, and the Azrieli
Global Studio invited students to propose their own theoretical
proposals. Our design is deliberately contextual on the outside while
minimalistic on the inside. Saint Laurent Boulevard is a historic hub
of Montreal’s Jewish community that is now a major nightlife and
commercial arterial, full of murals, window shoppers and patios
especially when pedestrianized in the summer months. We sought
to find a way to balance the gravity of the tragedy that the musuem’s
content displays with Saint Laurent’s role as a symbolic place of
refuge and ultimately survival and thriving of the Jewish community
even after the Holocaust. The building’s design is therefore extremely
contextual, mimicing the existing street fabric pattern of transparent
ground floor retail (which contain the brighter public programs) with
opaque masonry upper floors (which contain the darker, private
exhibits.
Interior View | Mimicing Agora the existing street fabric pattern of transparent ground floor retail
with masonry upper floors, the building draws people in through a through a
three storey atrium with a large commemorative mural visible from passerby
on the sidewalk. Inside, visitors circulate through exhibits around a central
commemorative exterior space which also brings in the relief of natural light
between the darker exhibits.
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Exterior View | Memorial Garden - Reflection Space
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