The Workshop



The finalists selected by the jury were: Orange Tango with Atelier in Situ, Photonic Dreams, Vlan Paysages; Bruce Mau Design, NOMADE-Lemieux+Pilon; Atelier Big City with Andrew Forster, Pastille Rose, Brière, Gilbert and Associates; Collectif dAb; et Intégral Concept with Jean Beaudoin and Ruedi Baur. Not all the finalists  participated in the workshop. Some jury members expressed disappointment that Toronto-based Bruce Mau Associates declined the invitation. The workshop participants were Atelier Big City with Andrew Forster, Pastille Rose, Brière, Gilbert and Associates; Zurich-based graphic designers Intégral Ruedi Bauer with Intégral Jean Beadoin, and OrangeTango with Atelier in Situ, Photonic Dreams, and Vlan Paysages, along with the dAb Collective. The process involved participating in a four day workshop, from February 14 to18, 2005, held in the SAT, the Society des Arts Technologiques, a well regarded contemporary music venue. Participants worked at the SAT more or less continuously. At the end of an intense four days, each team presented their conclusions in digital slide format.

The team of Jean Beaudoin and Zurichbased Ruedi Bauer was selected with their graphic strategy for branding the area. The winning team unveiled a more developed strategy in a media event held in November 2005, that can be viewed at www.quartierdesspectacles.com. The results for the present are primarily graphic, but the quality and openness of the process was exemplary. The dAb Collective Proposal dAb collective developed a threepronged strategy for approaching urban issues in the area. Abundant research material provided by the City of Montréal, a member of the Partnership and host to the competition, indicated that although there are many venues and seats available in the area, visitors to the city tend not to purchase tickets while in town, tending instead to frequent the free festival events they wander into. dAb hoped to link urban wandering to issues of sustainability, to social activism, to an urbanism sensitive to hearing and smell, and to the network

of urban venues in the district.

Le spectacle est le capital á un tel degré d'accumulation qu'il devient image.



Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle, 1967 Chapitre 1, 34

above: Images of the urban context.