Griffintown Interrupted: A Call for Speculative and Temporary Architecture

Griffintown Interrupted is an international ideas competition which invites speculation on the value of the temporary, the urban promise of postindustrial lands, and the possibility of dynamic, incremental architectures.

Propose a temporary, flexible and disassemblable structure for one of five sites across Griffintown, an evolving district in Montréal, Canada. Each of the five sites varies in lease duration, suggested program, and scale.

Finalist proposals will be featured in a digital exhibition and digital publication exploring the potential of indeterminacy in urban transformation.

Griffintown is widely considered to be one of Canada’s earliest industrial neighbourhoods, whose future has been uncertain ever since the postindustrial decline of the 50s. Today this indeterminacy remains, as Griffintown hovers on the precipice between its industrial past and an urban future. While municipal plans for the demolition and redevelopment of large swaths of the area are in place, many citizens insist that highrise condominiums are not the only answer. As this debate rages on, Griffintown Interrupted proposes a third focus for the debate: neither past (restoration) nor future (redevelopment), but present. How can regeneration occur now, encouraging short term architectural interventions which expand the existing community? What can be done now, while Griffintown is in limbo?

For more information, please see: http://griffintowninterrupted.net/