TACTICAL URBANISM
Setting new benchmarks for pedestrian-friendly public space and enhance the urban experience.
Agora Maximus is an innovative pedestrianisation project that pushes the boundaries of tactical urbanism by proposing highly durable, integrated and heavily planted modular installations, combined with an instantly iconic signature inspired by Montreal’s Quartier Latin — a student-friendly neighbourhood with a vibrant nightlife and active cultural precinct.
This innovative installation was created by LAAB Collective in collaboration with Signature design communication (SDC). To achieve its ambitious agenda, the design team proposed an immersive and vibrant temporary streetscape that would confirm the Quartier Latin’s legacy as the founding place of the city’s French institutions, as well as showcasing its joie de vivre. Drawing on this singular identity, the concept and storyline aim to playfully project the identity of mythical Saint-Denis Street, with its resolutely Latin character.
As an inclusive urban form, Agora Maximus celebrates the seasonal pedestrianisation of St-Denis Street (2022-2024), with viewing platforms and vantage points allowing users to take in the animated streetscape and its offerings of living arts during the summer festivals.
Immersive and intriguing, it combines two landmarks of Latin culture: the Agora, a place for civic meetings, and the Circus Maximus, a linear amphitheatre for live entertainment. In this way, the concept pays homage to festivals, circuses and experimental arts by transforming the urban space into a linear stage, with striking pixelated pop-up seating arrangements placed at intervals along the street.
The modular platforms offer accessible open spaces for pedestrians to socialise and take in the scenery. Their stepped profile evokes the main staircases of the cultural institutions of the Quartier Latin. Informal and playful, they take the form of colourful mounds of “pixels” filled with greenery. The colour palette uses grey to integrate into the heritage surroundings, white to evoke modernity, and orange to deliver a playful nod to roadwork visual codes.
The various platforms are linked by a continuous street-art graphic made of pixel patterns along the whole length of the street, which provides an ever-changing visual journey for pedestrians. A paired strategy of visual/graphic dressing of key commercial windows along the street enhances the immersive stroll and urban experience.
A modular system that is easy to assemble, install and dismantle, Agora Maximus is an innovative expression of temporary modular placemaking that adds vibrant life to this well-known Canadian city.
PROJECT PARTICULARS
Client SDC Quartier Latin
Location Montreal, Canada
Design LAAB Collective & Signature design communication
Photography Raphaël Thibodeau
COMPANY
LAAB Collective
W laabcollective.com
Signature design communication
W signaturedesign.ca