Profile

Place Ville Marie

Montreal, Canada
Completed 1962

Mixed-use development with offices, banking, retail, entertainment, underground parking and mass transit connections
 

Click on image to enlarge

Place Ville Marie is a seven-acre civic and commercial complex that sparked the renaissance of modern Montreal. Erected over a 15-meter deep open cut exposing the tracks of the Canadian National Railway, the development combines a 42-story office tower with new and existing buildings atop a three-dimensional public plaza. Sprawled below are multiple levels of shopping, parking and off-street delivery/service networks, all linked to buses, subways and commuter rails, and integrated with the surrounding city. Upon completion in 1962, PVM was the largest, most complex office development in the world.

Skyline identity was achieved with the 187-meter-high Royal Bank of Canada Building which houses 10,000 people on 40 cantilevered office floors of nearly an acre. The cruciform shape distributes the volume into four narrow wings in such a way that this very large building actively participates in the space rather than overwhelming it. At the tower's base a monumental skylit banking hall opens onto the plaza that forms the project's civic heart.

Above ground the three-block plaza enriches the center city with light, open space and a pivotal gathering place for social interaction and public events. Below ground, it shelters an innovative retail/entertainment/service/transit complex that envigorates downtown well into the night. PVM's 2.5 kilometers of shop-lined promenades gave rise to the underground network that now interconnects much of central Montreal.

Major Components

181,000m² Royal Bank of Canada Building with 14,100m² banking hall; 42,000m² IBM Building; 24,500m² Imperial Oil Building; 16,000m² plaza; 12,000m² retail concourse; 59,000m² parking for 1,200 cars on sub-levels 2-3; mass transit on level 4 below

I. M. Pei & Associates services

Master Planning; Architectural Design; Interior Design of banking halls and public spaces

Associate Architect

ARCOP (Affleck Desbarats Dimakopoulos Lebensold Michaud & Sise), Montreal, Quebec

Urban Planner

Vincent Ponte

Profile   Projects   Contacts   Contents