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Abstract
This paper revisits the “Metro/Education” project, an unrealized proposal for turning the underused spaces connected to Montreal’s underground metro system into a learning environment. Developed by architects Michel Lincourt and Harry Parnass in 1970, Metro/Education offered an alternative response to the campus plans for the newly created Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). The project shows how design was mobilized towards the strategic reorganization of education as part of a wider urban “system.” It offers a concrete illustration of how architecture and urban design, influenced by the discourse on megastructures, and informed by systems theory and environmental design, sought to redefine the role of designers as programmers of processes rather than designers of things. The paper also speculates as to how such intellectual emancipatory reconfigurations could go hand in hand with urban regeneration politics.
Acknowledgements
Interviews and archival and library consultations in Montreal and Brussels were possible thanks to financial support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a visiting fellowship at the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, and the hospitality of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). I thank Jean-Pierre Chupin and Irene Lund for their assistance with consulting the collections of the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and the Archives et bibliothèque d’architecture de l’ULB, Brussels, respectively; Michel Lincourt, Harry Parnass and France Vanlaethem for most valuable conversations; and Phyllis Lambert, An Charney, and Nicola Pelly for their help in establishing contacts. Louis Martin and Léa-Catherine Szacka commented on earlier versions of this paper, which grew out of discussions following the “Objects of Schooling” symposium organized by Elke Couchez and Rajesh Heynickx in May 2016.
Notes
1 Reyner Banham, “Megacity Montreal,” in Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 105–129.
2 Inderbir Singh Riar, “Montreal and the Megastructure, ca. 1967,” in Expo 67. Not Just a Souvenir, eds. Rhona Richman Kenneally and Johanne Sloan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 193.
3 Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 8.
4 Ibid.
5 Melvin Charney, “Grain Elevators Revisited,” Architectural Design, 37, no. 7 (1967): 328–334; repr. in On Architecture: Melvin Charney, A Critical Anthology, ed. Louis Martin (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 169–178.
6 Banham, “Megacity Montreal,” 105.
7 Ibid., 106.
8 Michel Lincourt and Harry Parnass, Metro/Education (Montreal: Université de Montréal (UdeM), Faculté de l’Aménagement, 1970); Michel Lincourt and Harry Parnass, Urb/Education Design. Cahiers de l’Environnement nos. 2–3, November (Brussels: Cahiers Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches de l’Environnement (CERE)). According to Michel Lincourt (in conversation with the author in Montreal, December 19, 2016) and Harry Parnass (in conversation with the author via Skype, April 17, 2018), the publication of Metro/Education was made possible thanks to funds the UdeM received from the Ford Foundation.
9 The project was included in a special issue of Architecture d’Aujourdhui dedicated to “La Ville” (“The City,” January 1971) and appeared in Architectural Design (August 1972): 526; and (May 1973): 313. In Design Quarterly, nos. 86–87 (1972) it was shown as part of a special report on the International Design Conference in Aspen themed “The Invisible City,” where Parnass and Lincourt had presented their work.
10 The five institutions were L’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Montréal, Collège Sainte-Marie, L’Ecole Normale Jacques-Cartier, L’Ecole Normale Ville-Marie and L’Ecole Normale de L’Enseignement Technique. UQAM was officially created on April 9, 1969, with its first academic entry in September 1969. According to Jean-Pierre Hardenne, this new university was much in the spirit of the student actions of 1968, with many of its professors being young, left-wing, and socially and politically engaged; Jean-Pierre Hardenne, Design 35 Ans – UQAM 40 ans (Montreal: École de design, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), 2010), 8–9, consulted at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Library, Montreal.
11 Riar, “Montreal and the Megastructure, ca 1967,” 202.
12 Ibid. Historian and theorist Peter Scriver (in conversation with the author in Canberra, July 2017) recognizes a similar shift in the work of John Andrews. Operating between Canada/United States and Australia, Andrews’ projects demonstrate a move away from more “hefty” megastructures constructed in concrete (e.g., Cameron Offices, Canberra, 1968–1976) towards lighter expressions of programming and flux (of use) in glass, steel, and transparent plastics (e.g., Callam Offices, Canberra, 1973–1981).
13 Ibid., 203.
14 France Vanlaethem, “Introduction,” in Discovering Modern Montréal and the Estérel Resort in Québec (Brussels: CIVA and Docomomo Québec, 2007), 20. In recent correspondence France Vanlaethem noted that the Quiet Revolution, while indeed gaining momentum in the 1960s, originated much earlier and that the first large project under Drapeau dates back to the mid-1950s, with the developments of Place des Arts.
15 Banham, “Megacity Montreal,” 120.
16 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 11.
17 Cedric Price, “National School Plan,” Architects’ Journal (May 25, 1966): 1282–1284; Cedric Price, “Potteries Thinkbelt,” Architectural Design (October 1966): 483–497; Cedric Price and Paul Barker, “Potteries Thinkbelt,” New Society, 192 (June 1966): 14–17. See also Isabelle Doucet, “Learning in the ‘Real’ World: Encounters with Radical Architectures (1960s–1970s),” Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49, no. 1 (2017): 7–21.
18 Laurence Sherman, a colleague of Lincourt and Parnass at the UdeM, had interviewed John Bremer in 1969; Lincourt and Parnass, Metro/Education, 39–41, 148.
19 “Vertical File Guy Desbarats,” consulted at the CCA Library. Parnass was brought up in the United States and studied at McGill University, Montreal, before graduating in architecture from Columbia University, New York; Michel Lincourt was raised and educated in Montreal. Both later studied Urban Design at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
20 Parnass in conversation with the author, April 17, 2018.
21 Louis Martin, ed., On Architecture: Melvin Charney, A Critical Anthology (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 194–201.
22 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 13.
23 For a chapter dedicated to the metro stations of Montreal, see, for example, France Vanlaethem and Danielle Doucet, “The Montreal Metro,” in Discovering Modern Montréal (Brussels: CIVA and Docomomo Québec, 2013), 118–135.
24 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 23.
25 See the long analysis section in Lincourt and Parnass, Metro/Education, 71–108.
26 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 53.
27 Due to copyright restrictions, it has not been possible to reproduce these photographs, by Pierre Gaudard, in this article.
28 Lorraine Monk, ed., Image 10: Les Ouvriers, Pierre Gaudard, exhibition catalogue (Ottawa: National Film Board of Canada, 1971).
29 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 52. From Parnass (in conversation with the author), I learned that they did not commission Gaudard, but selected existing photographs for reproduction.
30 Ibid., 23.
31 Conceptual discussions, such as those around urban infill and fluid environment, are fuller and more explicit in Urb/Education Design, while the original Metro/Education provides more empirical detailing of the specific Montreal case.
32 Ibid., 30–31.
33 Ibid., 43. The “urban infill” approach can also be seen in response to the problems identified by the project’s unofficial “client,” the Montreal Catholic School Commission, which struggled with available yet underused educational infrastructure (Parnass, in conversation with the author).
34 Ibid., 47, 71.
35 The 1970–1971 academic year at CERE also included seminars by, for example, Nicholas Negroponte on “The Architecture Machine,” in CERE feuillets d’informations, année académique 1970–1971, no. 1 (1970): 2 (Fonds Vanlaethem-Hardenne, Archives et bibliothèque d’architecture de l’ULB, Brussels, Boxes 10, 12). As Urb/Education, Metro/Education was published as the Cahier du CERE nos. 2–3; it is telling that the Cahier that preceded it proposed a systems approach based on new technologies; Etienne Dusart, Vers une stratégie de l’environnement. Cahier no. 1 (1970) (based on a presentation given at Brussels’ Centre d’Etudes d’Architecture (CEA), December 6, 1968), consulted at the Archives d’Architecture Moderne.
36 I draw from Eric Mumford’s detailed analysis of these conferences in Eric Mumford, “Continuity and Crisis: The Harvard Urban Design Program in Transformation 1960–1969,” in Defining Urban Design. CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline 1937–69 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 153–193. Parnass (in conversation with the author) claims that the program itself was still rather traditional and that he learned about systems analysis in courses he took outside Urban Design, such as computer programming, real estate, and transport.
37 Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964).
38 Mumford, “Continuity and Crisis,” 172–178.
39 Ibid., 186.
40 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 98.
41 Michel Lincourt with Harry Parnass, A propos de Montréal future … Urbanisme pour l’an 2020 (Montreal: General Urban Systems Corporation (GUSC), 1972), 44; consulted at the UdeM libraries, Montreal. Lincourt’s “mesodesign” proposition also draws from information technology as a way to facilitate “processes” rather than design “projects;” Michel Lincourt, “Mesodesign 1,” Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Architecturales, no. 9 (September 1969): 12–13 (based on a lecture Lincourt gave at the CEA in May 1969); Michel Lincourt, Le Mesodesign. Théorie d’organisation du milieu physique et modèle conceptuel de ville (Montreal: Presses de l’université de Montréal, 1972), 71, 190–193.
42 CERE, feuillets d’informations année académique 1970–1971. 1970. no. 1, 1. Fonds Vanlaethem-Hardenne, Archives et bibliothèque d’architecture de l’ULB, Brussels, Boxes 10, 12.
43 Printed in Dusart. Vers une stratégie de l’environnement, 2.
44 CERE, feuillets d’informations année académique 1970–1971, no. 4, 1.
45 While Lincourt (in conversation with the author) denies any founding role in CERE, official CERE leaflets state as founding members Paul Mignot, Michel Lincourt, and also Yona Friedman, Henri Van Lier, and Robert L. Delevoy.
46 “Rencontres Internationales de Cannes (10 au 16 Mars 1969): ‘Construction et Humanisme,’” La Maison, no. 3 (March 1969): 100; “Informations Professionnelles,” La Maison, no. 10 (October 1969): 394.
47 For the correspondence, announcements, leaflets, and booklets related to these events, see the Fonds Paul Mignot, Bibliothèque de la Société Centrale d’Architecture de Belgique and the Fonds Vanlaethem-Hardenne, Boxes 1, 12; both at Archives et bibliothèque d’architecture de l’ULB, Brussels.
48 See the leaflet for the Brussels conference 13-20 May 1973, “La participation de l’habitant à son environnement,” Fonds Vanlaethem-Hardenne, Archives et bibliothèque d’architecture de l’ULB, Brussels, Box 12.
49 Harry Parnass, Richard Saul Wurman, Charles Rusch, John Dollard and Ronald Barnes, “The City as a Classroom,” Design Quarterly, nos. 86–87 (1972): 46.
50 Parnass, in conversation with the author.
51 Lincourt and Parnass, Urb/Education Design, 43
52 Lincourt and Parnass, Metro/Education, 106–107.
53 Ibid., 23; Richard L. Meier, “The Organization of Technological Innovation in Urban Environments,” in The Historian and The City, eds. Oscar Handlin and John Burchard (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963), 74–83.
54 For a good summary of the history and objectives of the MSUA, see H. Peter Oberlander, “Canada’s Ministry of State for Urban Affairs,” Ekistics, 41, no. 243 (1976): 76–78, consulted via JSTOR, accessed 24 April 2018.
55 Gwen Bell, “The Editor’s Page,” Ekistics, 41, no. 243 (1976): 76. Special issue dedicated to Canada, consulted via JSTOR, accessed 24 April 2018.
56 Harry Parnass and Michel Lincourt, Urbex 1 (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs (MSUA), 1971); Michel Lincourt and Société générale des systèmes urbains, Urbex/Montréal (Montreal: La Société, 1974).
57 Harry Parnass and Michel Lincourt, with Larry Lithwick and Adriana Singer, “Urbex” Third Draft (Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs (MSUA), 1; consulted at the UdeM Library, Montreal.
58 Parnass et al., “Urbex” Third Draft, 2. Profits would be reinvested in public services and facilities.
59 Ibid., 23, 25.
60 Ibid., 2.
61 Michel Lincourt and Harry Parnass, Confex ’76 Settlement Issues in Canada and Demonstration Projects (Montreal: General Urban Systems Corporation (GUSC), 1974), 1, consulted at the UdeM library, Centre de Conservation, Montreal.
62 These include the (short-lived) Institute of Design in Montreal, directed by Lincourt; and the Sauvé Scholars Foundation, part of the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation specializing in public leadership.
63 France Vanlaethem, “Le métro,” lecture given at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal, 2011, recordings consulted November 6, 2017, at the CCA Library, Recording Box 13, BIB 209784.
64 From Louis Martin and Parnass I learn that, despite this strategic urban location, UQAM’s connections with the immediate urban environment are not perceived to be fully exploited.
65 France Vanlaethem in conversation with the author in Montreal, November 5, 2017.
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Isabelle Doucet
Isabelle Doucet is a professor of the theory and history of architecture at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. She undertook the research for this article while still at the University of Manchester, Manchester School of Architecture, UK. Her research focuses on the relationship between (urban) politics, aesthetics, and social responsibility in architecture. She is the author of The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968 (Ashgate, 2015), and co-editor, with Nel Janssens, of Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism (Springer, 2011). Isabelle is currently researching counter-cultural architectures in 1970s Belgium, and was in 2018–19 also a researcher on the Mellon Multidisciplinary Research Project “Architecture and/for the Environment,” coordinated by the Canadian Centre for Architecture.