A model of Westmount Square is on display in one of the galleries near the entrance to a tunnel that leads to the Atwater metro. Like a modernist dollhouse, the model encased in glass offers a bird's eye view of sleek architectural innovation.
The four towers—two commercial and two residential—frame Mount-Royal, and on a clear day near twilight, a sunset casts pastel hues between the tall glass structures.
But to experience to see it as its architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe first envisioned it is to imagine the glistening potential of the future.
Mies van der Rohe's time in Montreal corresponds to the end of his career and subsequent death in 1969, and Montreal's entry into modernity with Expo 67. As one of North America's oldest cities, stifled in the first half of the twentieth century by a repressive Catholic leadership, it's coming-of-age as a modern city came late.
The arrival of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the late 1960s represented a period in Montreal's history when it could look forward and imagine a new and liberated future severed from its past. The three buildings he worked on here reflect new ways of thinking about space, where the urban experience was reimagined as shaped by easy mobility, accessibility and imagination.
The arrival of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the late 1960s represented a period in Montreal's history when it could look forward and imagine a new and liberated future severed from its past.
Mies in Montreal
Mies van der Rohe is considered one of the greatest and most influential architects of the 20th century. Born in Germany, he was the last director of the famous Bauhaus school before escaping Nazi Germany and emigrating to the US during the 1930s. His style of architecture reflected many of the modernist values of Bauhaus, including but not limited to minimalism, the use of "true materials," the use of technology and "form follows function."
