Monville is Montréal

ACDF Architecture set out to design 269-room property located in downtown Montreal. Distinguished from the surrounding buildings by its height and its modernist trompe-l’oeil design, the slender building’s façade is comprised of prefabricated concrete panels – each window demarcating a single suite. At grade, a three-story curtain wall podium gives passersby views into the lobby. The hotel’s elegant and monochromatic exterior matches the clean aesthetic of its interior public spaces, which include a lobby cbar, a cafe, and various meeting areas, as well as a library and two rooftop rooms with a spacious outdoor terrace.

Guests enter through a low-ceiling glass vestibule before arriving in the soaring triple-height lobby. There, oversized columns impart monumentality and mystery, while also establishing distinct zones and areas of privacy. Their white bases help to provide the lobby with more human-scaled proportions. Along the windows, oak-clad fins both channel and shield views inside from the street, further contributing the lobby’s play between openness and intimacy.

The public area encourages guests to linger and socialize, with varied seating options and styles. Local artist Valerie Jodoin Keaton created a custom mural for the space featuring vintage black and white photographs of urban life to amuse guests with glimpses of Montreal’s history. At the apex of the space, there’s a lozenge-shaped white terrazzo bar with brass detailing. By contrast, the all-black and boxy cafe transitions from day to night.

A monochromatic palette sets a tone of simplicity in the guest suites – keeping attention on the floor-to-ceiling windows, which enlarge the feeling of the rooms with expansive city views. The design team focused on providing guests with key comforts including king-size beds and custom furnishings. A flagship for a future collection of properties, Hotel Monville is unique in Montreal: it offers a sophisticated stay in the heart of the city at an affordable price.

Beaubois once again demonstrated its expertise ad agility in the construction of Montreal’s Hotel Monville. The Beaubois team played an active role, crafting the headboards and footboards, night tables, entertainment centers, wardrobes, and vanities for the 269 guest rooms. The company also left its distinctive signature on the gymnasium and the lobby. The latter provided Beaubois with a major challenge, particularly in the installation of the wood panels that the team used to clad the angled columns, three stories tall and heads flush, with the sloped ceiling. Beaubois also produced various furnishings for public spaces, including the express registration counter composed of metal and granite. The incorporation of these two materials into a number of elements required tight coordination.

In collaboration with renowned architects ACDF, the Hotel Monville project covered traditional lighting needs as well as expansive and artistic notions in the common areas. Each bed is the hotel is flanked with Cliff sconces to create a sense of intimacy. This lighting motif reappears on the common areas’ columns, which feature custom applications of the Cliff Wall. In the library, seeping Laurent 13 models and an effortless vibrancy.

Through her photographic work Montreal: Invitation to the Voyage, photographer Valerie Jodoin Keaton provides an overview of her hometown through time and space. The mural transports the viewer through various periods in the city’s history, visiting important landmarks along the way. Spread throughout the walls and ceilings of the two floors of Monville Hotel’s lobby, the 3000-square-foot photographic fresco pays tribute to Montreal and its creators. The artist intertwines the past and the present by patching her own photographs (about 200 photos) with those of past generations (86 archival photos*) and by unifying them with the same black-and-white rendering. Like a quilt, Valerie Jodoin Keaton’s photographic fresco weaves together key elements of Montreal’s culture and architecture according to the artist’s personal vision and envelops the public space of Hotel Monville to give it a timeless dimension.

*From the collections of Archives Montreal, the BanQ, and the Pointe-à-Callières Museum. A catalog listing all the titles and references of the archival photos of this work is available on request at reception

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