Thursday Doors – October 17, 2019

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). 

Université de Montréal’s New Science Complex

Bienvenue au complexe des sciences/ Welcome to the science complex

While on our photo walk a few weekends ago through the borough of Outremont we visited one of the latest major construction projects in the Montréal region, the new Science Complex built for the Université de Montréal.

As might be expected for a new modern building intended to house a major university science center, glass and steel, tall ceilings, and huge wide open interior spaces are what these structures are all about.

Built at a cost of just over 350 million $ Cdn the two main towers and peripheral structures were built on a 118 hectare lot that formerly housed the long abandoned Outremont rail yards.

Having fun taking pics from behind the steam fountain built the shape of an old locomotive carousel.

Approaching on foot from the Acadie Metro station, the first thing visitors notice is the cool spaceship-like staircase and elevated walkway that leads to the complex.

The university acquired the land from the railroad back in 2006. After 10 years of decontamination and extensive public consultations it was decided that since it was so expensive to retrofit existing buildings to able to fulfill the technological demands of today’s modern research facilities, the best use for the land would be to build new labs, and move the entire science department there.

Lots of glass to let in tons of natural light

These buildings along with the new student residences and condos that are going up are helping to revitalize what had been an economically stagnant part of the city. In fact the city even bought some of the land from the university with the intention of building approximately 1500 residential units over the next few years. Hopefully they will be affordable.

Where there is glass there will be doorfies (door selfies)

Aside from the doors, new modern buildings like this are a treat for photographers who enjoy playing with sharp angular shapes and reflections…so yes I had a fun time 😉

Reflection of the window washers at work on the building opposite this one

Let’s head on in through one of the front entrances.

Some parts of the building are not quite finished

Here’s a quick collection of my favorite artsy shots from inside.

Natural light amplified though the use of glass and mirrors

Stairs and large sitting area

Textured ceiling tiles

Shadows through the doors

And one more doorfie to wrap things up.

As always I thank you for dropping in 🙂

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