Facing Viger Avenue West in the International District, this .2-acre, linear installation is located on the ground floor of the Montréal Convention Center. Featuring pink lacquered, organic, concrete trees, the immersive work brings levity and color to the interior space.
In the late 1990s Palais des congrès de Montréal and Société immobilière du Québec engaged Claude Cormier + Associés to design a winter garden at the center. Subversively, Cormier proposed an “artificial forest” of 52 pink, vertical, hand-cast concrete sculptures extending from the floor to the ceiling. Completed in 2002, the work honors the city’s cosmetic industry and stately trees destroyed in a 1998 ice storm. Unable to use wood from the impacted trees, Cormier + Associés patterned the artificial trunks after mature maples that line the avenues in the old city.
The irregularly spaced forms are interspersed between the center’s western façade and its Westside Passageway, navigating between, and juxtaposing the structure’s concrete columns. The work’s eastern extent is characterized by a linear, uneven row of trunks, delineated from the passageway by a parallel pink line in the grey tiled floor. Separated from the floor and ceiling by modest gaps, the pink trees appear to float and are reflected and distorted by the mirrored ceiling. The work is visible from the avenue and echoes the center’s vertically oriented windows.
An early built project for the firm, Lipstick Forest demonstrates Cormier’s subversive and playful aesthetic, through lines of his career. The project received the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects’ National Merit Award in 2003.
