Winning design for public square announced

Montreal’s Place des Montréalaises, the public square announced last year next to the Champ-deMars métro station, should be completed by 2022 and cost the city $62.4 million.

On Thursday, the city announced the winners of a design competition launched last year to find a concept that would properly honour 21 women from Montreal.

The city said artist Angela Silver and firms Lemay and SNC-Lavalin were chosen by an 11-person jury because of their concept’s “serenity, calmness, and poetry.”

The project will include a flowered, inclined plane rising toward the Champ-de-Mars park and an “urban forest” at the Champ-deMars métro exit. It will also incorporate a pedestrian link between the Champ-de-Mars métro station and Old Montreal that will pass above the Ville Marie Expressway and St-Antoine St.

As a 375th-birthday gift to Montreal, the provincial government had spent $68 million on covering the stretch of highway and temporary landscaping at the square that included grass and multi-coloured crushed stone.

The square is bordered by Viger Ave., Hotel-de-Ville Ave., St-Antoine St. and Sanguinet St.

Among the women honoured at the square are Jeanne Mance, Marie-Joseph Angélique, Jessie Maxwell Smith, Ida Roth Steinberg and the 14 engineering students murdered at Polytechnique Montréal in 1989.

Their names will be engraved on steps at the square.

Inastatement,MontrealMayor Valérie Plante called the concept a “beautiful public place to rest, stroll, gather and admire the heart of our city while honouring the memory of great Montrealers.”