Located at the Place Ville Marie (PVM) this monumental, stainless-steel, site-specific, installation is elevated above the ground plane, positioned snuggly between two Modernist structures.
The PVM was designed by architect Henry Cobb of I.M. Pei & Associates (now Pei Cobb Freed & Partners) in the early 1960s and includes an elevated, rectilinear plaza framed by commercial towers. Rehabilitated in 2023, the plaza’s gridded ground plane is accessed by eastern and western entrances oriented on axis with Mount Royal, the mountain and park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., in 1874. The Ring, designed by Claude Cormier + Associés, and completed in 2022, marks the plaza’s eastern entrance.
Installed over a staircase that includes a series of stair-ramps, or “stramps,” the minimalist work is meant to appear as if it is floating. Claude Cormier + Associés collaborated with structural engineer Franz Knoll, who worked on the original design of the PVM, to anchor the installation to the adjacent, symmetrical structures with four points of contact. The work measures approximately 98 feet in diameter, roughly the heights of the towers that frame and support it.
The Ring directs attention to the approximately one-mile-long axis that visually connects the PVM with Mount Royal. Viewed from the plaza, the work frames the borrowed view to the park, McGill University campus, and the Mount Royal Cross. The Ring and the cross are both illuminated at night, reinforcing this relationship.
The project received the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects’ Award of Excellence and National Award in 2023.
