Neuf Architecture

[Bok Wykes]

NEUFarchitect(e)s is a team of creative professionals who have been contributing to Canada's built environment for nearly 50 years. Active in all sectors, including strategic planning, urban design, institutional, resorts and hotels, residential, interiors, commercial, industrial and office buildings, the firm specializes in finding creative solutions to today's most challenging design problems. With offices in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, NEUF architect(e)s has grown into one of the most diversified architecture and design practices in the country.

We are excited to announce that the Muraflex Showroom, designed by NEUF Architect(e)s, has been awarded Gold Certifications from the Grands Prix du Design under the discipline of interior design in three separate categories: Offices over 54, 000 sq. feet, Agile Work Environment, and Showrooms.

NEUF Architect(e)s was founded in 1971 and is one of the largest architecture and design firms in Canada. They value innovation and are known for constantly embracing new technology and ideas. They have designed landmarks such as the Biodome Migration and Birks Hotel in Montreal, and various other public places such as hospitals, schools, and libraries. As one of the most prestigious of design firms in Canada, their work ranges from urban designs to interiors in both commercial and residential spaces all over Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. A multiple-time winner of Grands Prix du Design in numerous categories, NEUF Architect(e)s has also attained countless other awards, including Prix Habitat Design, Architecture MasterPrize, NACIA, LOOP Design Awards, and IDA Design Awards, just to name a few.

Working along NEUF Architect(e)s, the Muraflex Montreal Headquarters was designed to be multipurpose. The building serves as a manufacturing center and offices for all production and management purposes. Additionally, it doubles as a showroom. Clients and sales reps are conveniently able to view all our operations in one place, as well as get a sense of what the products look and feel like in real time.

As a workspace itself, NEUF Architect(e)s purposefully designed the Muraflex office as an employee-friendly space. A vast open-plan office with glazed walls makes for maximum collaboration while simultaneously enabling the passage of natural light and air circulation throughout the office. The first floor has a spacious cafeteria, able to withhold a plethora of appliances and seating for over 100 people. NEUF Architect(e)s also incorporated kitchens on each floor where employees can grab a quick coffee, tea, or snacks from the mini-fridges.

By the passion and commitment of Ernest Cognacq and his wife Marie-Louise Ja, since its foundation, Samaritaine Paris Pont-Neuf became the go-to place to buy the trendiest dresses, dine at the aptly named Le Toupary or simply to see and be seen.

LVMH entrusted DFS, the world leader in the sale of luxury products for travelers, with the design and management of Samaritaine Paris Pont- Neuf department store. For its first establishment in Europe in 2016, DFS relaunched Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, Italy.

One hundred years later, with the great liner having reached the end of its tether, Bernard Arnault with LVMH took a gamble and brought it back to life with SANAA, the Japanese architecture firms founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. A master of its art, the Japanese architecture firm wielded the same weapon as Jourdain and Sauvage: creativity.

Any intervention had to be the subject of close consultation with the Ministry of Culture, via the DRAC le-de-France. Hence La Samaritaine wished to involve a heritage architect as early as possible in this operation. Unlike Magasin 4, which is entirely new, the Magasin 2 programme had to adapt to the building so that the heritage elements were preserved while being brought into line with current standards and requirements.

At Samaritaine, Canadian studio Yabu Pushelber highlighted the Eiffel structure and its luminosity while bringing their warm, refined style to all floors of the Pont-Neuf building outside the beauty floor: a dialogue between the historic faade and their contemporary approach. Visitors are invited to an intimate, friendly shopping experience, full of surprises and discoveries in the form of a chic Parisian stroll. In terms of materials, Yabu Pushelberg has chosen noble materials such as this terrazzo, a nod to Parisian cobblestones. The agency also designed the furniture and rugs tastefully coordinated with bronze and touches of emblematic grey-blue from the original decor.

Interior designers Chlo Ngre, Karine Chahin and Virginie de Graveron got to know each other at India Mahdavi. Coming back together for Samaritaine Paris Pont-Neuf, the trio designed the spaces of the Apartment and the two private lounges dedicated to jewellery. Their inspiration? The motley style of Parisian apartments that mix classic French furniture and more contemporary codes like this colored leopard and these repurposed tailor's tables. They also found some of the store's furniture, including an 18th century wrought iron bed transformed into a bench on the 4th floor.

On the Seine side, there is now the Cheval Blanc Paris hotel in the Art Deco building originally created by architect Henri Sauvage. The hotel was designed by architectural firm Maison douard Franois.

The two restaurants on the seventh floor have terraces overlooking the Seine and a garden terrace skirting La Samaritaine's glass roof to the north. A spa with a 30-metre-long swimming pool and a fitness centre has been built in the first basement.

ARCHIVIBE connects international architecture and interior design firms, furniture and building materials manufacturers, architecture students and architects, through meaningful studio visits or communication projects based on values and common grounds.

Created in collaboration with French designer Philippe Starck, YOO is a deluxe residential building. The architecture and interior design took into consideration the growth of the Griffintown district, while uniting both flamboyance and simplicity. The founders of YOO aspired to create a vertical village to bring together a population possessing numerous, different lifestyles. The glass tower features 30-foot high arches, animating the cultural corridor of Ottawa St. A street garden was created, giving a portion of the land back to the community.

The building block between rue de Pont Neuf, rue du Cirque and rue de Laeken has a remarkable place in the history of Brussels postmodernism. In the late 1980s, after a decade of conterprojects and contestation by figures such as Leon Krier, postmodern architecture began to be institutionalised. At that time, AG Group became an engaged proponent of what was back then regarded as an alternative approach to architecture and urbanism.

Throughout work sessions between evr-architecten and Rotor, different design proposals were tested. The working assumption was that a cut-and-paste approach to materials could be a way to reconcile the paradoxical heritage of the 1990s and the expectations of the new project. This resulted in a number of design choices consisting in preserving some parts of the existing interiors, while transforming others, as well as in the use of reclaimed materials for a number of applications.

During the works, RotorDC realized the careful dismantling of granite slabs and wood panelling intended to be reinstalled in the project. The panelling (around 150m2) was reused as such, concentrated in one of the wings of the building, to clad the walls of the meeting rooms. The granite was reused for the central bar in the project's central open space. Furthermore, RotorDC supplied 300m2 of reclaimed and cleaned ceramic floor tiles for the sanitary spaces and the kitchen.

Additionaly, over 1000m2 of cobble stones and other landscaping elements where reused in situ at the buildings courtyard, and over 2000m2 of raised floor tiles where reclaimed and reused over the entire floor area.

Traces of the existing building remain visible in plan (an unfolding partition wall remaining in place) and along the edges of the project, like an elevator lobby or a passageway that haven't been touched. The window frames and associated woodwork like radiator covers have been preserved as well, by simply replacing the glass in the frames.

The result of these efforts is that the new project, while still absolutely succeeding in transforming the ground floor from a maze of small office spaces into a open and light campus for AG, is a layered one. The old project remains visible in the new. A carefully drawn plan and the reuse of materials connect to the history of the site, rather than replacing it.

US-based Cannon Design and Canadian studio NEUF Architectes have completed the first phase of high-rise medical facility in Montreal, described as one of the largest healthcare projects in North America.

Encompassing three million square feet (278,709 square metres), the giant complex consists of interconnected bars clad in glass and metal panels. The bars vary in height and width, with the tallest one rising 22 stories. A courtyard sits as the centre of the complex, "providing areas for contemplation and acting as a counterpoint to the dense building massing".

"The design team approached the project from all scales, including the large-scale urban element, the local neighbourhood context, and the fine grain of a human component, central to its vocation as a place of healing," said the team. The project was designed by global firm Cannon Design, which has 15 offices, and Canadian firm NEUF Architectes, which has offices in Montreal and Ottawa.

Affiliated with the University of Montreal, the teaching hospital is remarkably large, even by healthcare project standards. "Begun in 2009, the CHUM teaching institution is the largest healthcare construction project in North America and the largest public-private partnership project in Canadian history," the team said.

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