The urban housing project, Irène, located in Montreal’s St-Henri borough, exemplifies how innovative design can re-new and subsequently highlight existing infrastructure within the City. Perforated aluminium panels, customized into a novel exterior building envelope screen the upper three storeys of an addition above an existing industrial building from 1938.

Drawing an analogy with a theatrical curtain, the metallic skin acts equally to veil and to reveal the activity within, offering an ever-changing urban performance that adds a touch of spectacle to the neighbourhood. Constructed by the Railway and Power Engineering Corporation Ltd., the existing building’s typology speaks of a past era boasting brick facades with decorative pilasters and ornamental masonry accents.

The three-storey addition creates the impression of a light, floating volume atop the existing, robust base — a contrasting superstructure that, by virtue of its difference, gives rise to a dialogue between old and new, tradition and contemporary, the building and its surroundings.