The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is composed of five pavilions: the Hornstein Pavilion (1910); the Stewart Pavilion (1976); the Desmarais Pavilion (1991); the Bourgie Pavilion (2011), and the new Pavilion for Peace (2016). The new building is located on Bishop Street to the south of the Desmarais Pavilion, designed by Moshe Safdie. The two buildings are linked by an aerial passageway spanning an alley. Whereas Sherbrooke Street has grown over the years to include larger-scale towers, Bishop Street has retained the 19th-century scale of Victorian houses. The project was conceived to address both of these scales simultaneously. The dynamic rotation of the bipartite composition allows a subtle integration of the Victorian scale. The rotation is geo-specific: the lower body turns and greets the visitor while the upper body opens toward the museum campus and Mount Royal further in the distance. Photo by Marc Cramer
The MMFA campus is an assemblage of distinct architectural styles. Each pavilion evokes its era and provides a commentary on the particular role that the institution has played in society over time. This idea is foremost anchored in the unique circulation strategy of each pavilion. The Beaux-Arts museum of 1910, designed by architects Edward and William S. Maxwell, is structured around an introverted central grand stair that contributes little to the act of exhibition viewing. It is ?as though the ceremony of the visit was of equal importance to the contemplat...