This project was submitted for a limited design competition sponsored by Hydro-Québec, the most prominent of Quebec’s publicly owned corporations. The program required a significant enlargement of the corporation’s existing facilities on the block that is dominated on its south side by Hydro’s existing tower, dating from the 1960’s.

The project aims to revitalize this important downtown district and to enhance the urban presence of Hydro-Québec. The proposal is for a new 37-storey building in the centre of the block on axis with the existing tower. To evoke the progress and dynamism associated with Hydro-Québec, the project employs various highly technological images and water - an abundant natural resource essential to the corporation - as unifying elements throughout the complex. A stream links the old tower with the new, and spills into a large outdoor pool adjacent to Saint-Catherine Street. Details of the main building borrow from the vocabulary of the hydroelectric dams, while the flow of water across the site erodes a symbolic chasm through the tower, emphasizing the north-south axis of the project and affirming a formal dialogue between the old and the new towers.