Project Overview
Nestled at the intersection of Robert-Bourassa Boulevard and Ottawa Street in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Odea Montréal is a striking gateway to one of Canada’s most populated and historic cities. Featuring 367 apartments and 68 condominiums along with office and retail space, the 26-story building honors the culture of the Cree, one of the largest First Nations in North America, with a design inspired both by the shape of a canoe and the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere. The structure’s name, Odea, also comes from the Cree word for canoe, ode. Working with project architect Lemay, Saramac produced 569 precast concrete panels for the project.
Honoring the Cree Nation Through Precast Concrete
Odea Montréal has four facades constructed from white architectural precast concrete panels with a light sand-blasted finish. While precast concrete was selected for the work largely due to the material’s durability and speed of construction, Dalius Bulota, architect at Lemay, noted that aesthetic factors also came into play.
“Precast [concrete] was also chosen because the whiteness and grain of the material—concrete—evokes the bark of a birch tree, in reference to the project’s strong symbol, the canoe,” he said.
To honor the traditions of the Cree community in the design, Lemay’s team adopted a sensitive approach and worked in collaboration with Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal. For Odea Montréal, Lemay’s design approach draws inspiration from the forest and the birch tree, developing a narrative that evokes the passage of history through the resemblance of a white birch tree trunk. The birch tree is an emblematic species of the boreal forest, and in the architects’ vision, the precast concrete facade for Odea Montréal protects the building’s interior spaces in the same manner that the bark of the birch tree protects its trunk and branches. Further linking the project with the culture of the Cree Nation and their principles of land preservation, Odea Montréal is designed to promote the values of environmental protection, carbon reduction, and user well-being, for which precast concrete has an influence.
The use of precast concrete also accelerated the project timeline. Most of the building’s nearly 600 windows were preinstalled by Saramac as part of the production process, which reduced the building’s overall construction time. As Bulota explained, benefits were even realized on the project site as the work proceeded.
“Durability and resiliency were part of the equation, but so was reducing the time of bringing up the building enclosure,” he said. “In doing so, we reduced the costs of renting the public space at ground level around the construction site and limited obstruction of the neighboring transit.”
Achieved through the collaborative work of a team committed to culturally resonant design, Odea Montréal stands as a towering example of not only the design flexibility of precast concrete but also the impact that the world’s most versatile building material can bring to a historically significant project.
Mason Nichols is a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based writer and editor who has covered the precast concrete industry since 2013. |