Team: Mario Saia, Dino Barbarese, Vladimir Topouzanov, Karl Robert, Alexie Gauthier-Bertrand, Hugo Duguay.

In 1878, in response to the social life that was being organized in Quebec at the time, the Young Men Christian Association gave the architect Peachy the mandate to produce the plans and specifications for the first YMCA in Quebec, Place d’Youville. The building has stood the test of time and despite the transformations its facades have undergone, they are rightly attributed a heritage value that calls for their conservation. On the entire site where other buildings were erected which are due to be demolished, the Diamond must now be accommodated.

The setting

Faced with the cramped conditions of the site, the program, of remarkable density, dictates the position of the broadcasting room and the creation studio. These form the heart of the project. The architect must embed them in a setting whose exterior walls integrate and extend the facades of Peachy at the same time as they continue in a dialogue with Place d’Youville, rue Saint-Jean and rue des Glacis. The setting in question is not only made up of the envelope of the building, it encompasses all of the spaces which are attached, on both sides, to the room and the creative studio. In these spaces, a route takes shape, which links them to each other and to the city, through the views it offers.

The facades

A curtain, a glass veil and the facades inherited from the YMCA building make up the facades of the Diamant. Limestone and glass are the dominant materials. On the Glacis side, they form a curtain whose profile corresponds to the broadcasting room. Its folds move apart or pile up depending on the views we want to create. While the clear glass sections are generous with regard to the public spaces, they become opaque with regard to the stage cage, except near the ground at the northwest end, while they illuminate the green room below. The profile of the curtain joins the cornice of the Peachy facade. Behind the windows of the latter is housed, on the second floor, the foyer of the room while on the first, we find the commercial use, such as originally, which promotes exchange with the street. Taking advantage of a favorable floor height, a mezzanine extends the commercial function along the curtain, rue des Glacis.

A veil of glass replaces the attic roof and is placed on the cornice of the Peachy facade. It covers it all the way to continue and form the entrance to the theater to the east. There he bows towards her and receives the marquise and the theater sign, inherited from the old Paris Cinema. It gives off a luminous wall which catches the eye and announces the entrance. Through its transparency, it reveals the reception hall. The term veil refers to the effect produced by the variation in transparency of the glass, which goes from opaque to clear, filtering and bending the light, both interior and exterior, in a differentiated way, and modulating the views. The game takes place both horizontally and vertically, in connection with the interior course, which will be covered later.

Set back from the street facades, the volumes of the upper floors are covered with the same veil, adding to the economy means of expression. The veil here connotes the lightness of these high-perched facades, with a view to lightening the scale of the dominant volumes of the project compared to its immediate neighbors. At the top of these facades, rue Saint-Jean and rue des Glacis, the glass forms the translucent screen of solar panels which will preheat the fresh air which supplies the building’s ventilation systems.

The inner journey

A route crisscrosses the spaces, from the reception hall to the creative studio. The theater’s front doors open into a two-story lobby that continues to the foyer. In its upper part, it fits into the latter and offers in the background a perspective from the foyer, the luminous wall adjoining the Capitol. From the reception area, a staircase extends to connect all the floors up to that of the creative studio. From the third floor, its well is surrounded by a glass partition, both to restrict communicating areas (in the sense understood in fire safety) and, depending on the time of day and events, to restrict authorized users access to floors beyond the broadcast room foyer.

The staircase allows the daily user, as well as the occasional visitor or the spectator invited to studio 1, to walk through the vast volumes, to see what is happening there. Glances at

the place through a window, discovery of a detail that we had never noticed, the senses and the mind are engaged during the journey. A green wall, lit from the skylights on the terrace, hangs from the staircase. We will admit that a good dose of oxygen is required to climb the steps, but we will also admit that physical exercise is a healthy habit.

At its conclusion on the floor of studio 1, the route undulates to become more playful and lead to the terrace, where it continues. Well located in the topography of Place d’Youville, the terrace also offers more distant views, some pointed out on the drawing of the overall plan. Partly vegetated, the terrace responds to the green glacis of the neighboring fortifications. With the high green roof of the upper volume, the terrace completes the wall of the setting and offers the occupants of the neighboring towers a very civic view of this fifth, neat facade.

Integration

The challenge is for the Diamant to have its own identity on this Place d’Youville, while integrating into it and welcoming the built heritage it inherits. The heritage integration in question here is situated in a broader perspective of interpretation and formal exchanges between the new and the old, in similarities and oppositions (of scale, materials, colors, molding) , and not from a perspective of complete restitution of elements which no longer exist. This would be the case if we were to restore the YMCA building, but we are building the Diamond, integrating valuable elements of the YMCA. Also the language proposed goes beyond the sole reference to the work of Peachy. If, for example, the metaphor of the stone and glass curtain immediately seems to refer to the language of the stage, the idea is first derived from the examination of the triangulated art deco motifs of the old Paris Cinema.

It is also the neon lighting characteristic of the marquise and the sign of the old cinema, this signaling luminosity in the landscape, that the inflected glass veil of the entrance, marked by a luminosity, calls upon. different, interpreted, because it is transparent, as opposed to the opaque facade of the old cinema. The interior shines and the route joins the Place. From there, multiple urban routes emerge according to the destinations. The Place is then perceived as an enlarged square of the Theater. The position of the Theater in the curved route of rue Saint-Jean is privileged. The original designers of the marquee and the sign understood this.

The hearth

The Theater foyer is superimposed on the ground floor business. These spaces are partitioned by the restored facades of the Peachy building. The brick, recovered from the dismantling of the interior masonry walls, constitutes the interior cladding of these walls. If technically this choice restores to the facade walls their appearance (and their properties) of solid masonry, it is primarily due to the desire for a simple reading, which highlights the scale and arched shape of the openings designed by Peachy. A wooden paneling, made up of boards cut from existing wooden frame elements, covers the wall of the broadcasting room and goes up, with the staircase, to studio 1, thus unifying the floors. Heritage integration passes thus by the memory of the place, drawing elements from the architectural periods which constitute it today, consolidating the facades of the YMCA, using recovered materials.

The functional solution

From the point of view of the Théâtre Le Diamant, its primary function, the places of creation, diffusion and rehearsal must constitute the primary concern of the architect. Even if the home is cramped, we will first talk about the spectacle we saw and what it provoked in us. Conversely, if the room limits the imagination of the director, the vast foyer will not atone for the fault. Although the importance of the rehearsal studio (#2), located at The basement does not appear in the program, we have placed it adjoining a storage room, so as to safeguard its future flexibility. The adjoining partition itself could be removable from the outset. The creation studio (#1) extends above the broadcasting room from the wall on axis F. It is the wall that crosses all the floors, the lateral load wall from a structural point of view, the background of the route from an architectural point of view. This position makes it possible to create a high foyer, which opens onto the terrace, and side passageways at the height of the technical walkways. The stage cage of the broadcasting room is improved. On the fringes of the Capitol, its volume is not truncated, compared to that proposed in the preparatory studies. Grill and walkways can therefore continue. That said, honesty demands that we mention that this possibility will depend on wind studies and the resulting snow loads on the roof of the Capitol below. Ultimately, the functional benefit would be to make the grill accessible from the freight elevator, which the plans do not show at the moment. The entire structure of the three key volumes, from an acoustic point of view, which are the broadcast room, the mechanical room and studio #1, was designed to minimize the structural connections between them and concentrate the processing of the audio in key points. sound transmission. Mentioned for illustrative purposes, these entirely material concerns express our approach which consists of thinking about the enclosure which supports the work of creators and artists who will develop their ideas there, and show their art there with the greatest possible freedom of action. In the immediate future, the planned scenography is certainly illustrated, in a manner consistent with the structure and architecture. But it is a working framework, a step forward towards a solution in the making.