In Friday’s (3/27) Gazette (Montreal), Arthur Kaptainis reports, “the Quebec Culture Ministry has announced that a team including Montreal construction giant SNC-Lavalin Inc. and Diamond and Schmitt Architects of Toronto will build the [Montreal Symphony Orchestra] concert hall at a cost of $267 million—almost two and a half times the $105-million sticker attached to the project when it was launched in 2006 by Premier Jean Charest…Organized as a public-private partnership, the hall at the vacant northeast corner of Place des Arts will be finished in the summer of 2011, according to a government communiqué.” Architect Jack Diamond, designer of Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, “said yesterday that Montrealers could expect a contemporary interpretation of a classic room. ‘The classic shoebox design, like the Musikverein in Vienna—this is a modern version.’ ” Diamond “stressed that the building would be a dedicated concert hall, not a multi-purpose facility like Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, the central structure in Place des Arts in which the MSO has performed, for better or worse, since 1963.” Kaptainis notes that the New York-based acoustical firm Artec was “hired by the province” as consultant for the project in 2006.
Posted March 27, 2009
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