Adaptive Reuse
Design, memory and transformation. The former police headquarters in Parc Victoria, Quebec City, as a site for design exploration.
The ARC-6038 studio, led by Fabio Sedia in the first year of the master’s program, studies the former police headquarters in parc Victoria, in Quebec City’s Saint-Roch neighbourhood, at 275–285, rue de la Maréchaussée. How can a closed institutional building be transformed into a place for collective life that opens onto the park and the city?
The FAAAD–Atelier 11 educational program explores a place for learning, making, research, exhibitions and public life. It is a working hypothesis to be discussed and refined throughout the studio.
Reading, interpreting, designing: archives, observation, measured surveys, analytical redrawings and models build an understanding of what exists. Design scenarios examine retention, repair, subtraction and addition, from the territorial scale to the detail. The project connects the memory of places with contemporary uses and careful stewardship of resources.
The concurrent course ARC-7045, Approaches to Design in Existing Buildings, is taught by Marie-Chantal Croft and coordinated by Fabio Sedia. The analysis of international and Quebec precedents informs a comparative atlas of transformations: heritage values, uses, materials, structure, reuse and carbon. Each course retains its own assignments and assessments.
