The Diane Dufresne Centre?s brushed stainless steel columns are lit in silhouette at night. The rhythmic colonnade flanks a reflecting pool.
PROJECT Centre d?art Diane Dufresne, Repentigny, Quebec

ARCHITECTS ACDF Architecture

TEXT Nik Luka

PHOTOS Adrien Williams, except where noted
A quiet but elegant declaration has been made on the outskirts of Montreal. Gracing the off-island suburb of Repentigny, facing one of the oldest stone churches in North America, the Centre d?art Diane Dufresne by Maxime-Alexis Frappier, FIRAC, and his team at ACDF Architecture is the centrepiece for a new municipal hub. The beautiful building announces that civic architecture can take its rightful place in the sprawling suburban landscapes that ring Canada?s major urban centres. The Centre sits within a series of handsome frames: it?s surrounded by the bucolic lawns and gardens of a municipal park, encircled by hardscaped elements in stone and wood, and perched upon a platform fronted by an elegant reflecting pool. From the last arises a well-scaled colonnade of nine bays, the Centre?s front porch. The building itself takes shape as a glass-fronted atrium, into which are set a sensuously Aalto-like set of wood-clad boxes. These house a large exhibition hall, a multifunctional room for activities, events, and artists-in-residence, and a series of smaller dedicated program spaces. One of these, a music room, includes practice chambers used by the local school board, as part of an initiative to ...