International competition for ideas on reusing the roof of the old Montreal Olympic Stadium

MONTREAL — The agency that oversees Montreal's Olympic stadium is looking for ideas to reuse components of the building's tattered, old roof, including membranes the size of 26 hockey rinks and 12 kilometers of cables.

This week, the Olympic Park launched an international call for design and architecture students and professionals to propose ways to give decomposable materials a second life starting this summer.

Quebecers will be asked to vote for their favorite of eight ideas chosen by a jury of experts who review the proposals.

“The competition is open to the international community to gather as many proposals as possible for the environment, economy and society,” the provincial agency that manages the Olympic site said in a statement.

An emblematic fixture of the Montreal skyline, the nearly 50-year-old stadium was designed by French architect Roger Taylibert for the 1976 Summer Olympics and was home to the Montreal Expos baseball club until 2004.

The stadium is a giant oval with a Teflon-coated fiberglass roof, installed in 1998, and is tilted at a 45-degree angle by a series of cables attached to a 165-meter-tall tower, making it the tallest leaning tower in the world. according to the agency, the world.

Support cables, internal and external membranes and hardware are among the roof components the agency wants to repurpose. The two roof shells total 42,000 square meters, roughly the size of 26 hockey rinks; the total length of the cables is about 12 kilometers to Boulevard Saint-Laurent in Montreal; In addition, there are 434 steel connectors on the roof that secure the cables.

In February, the Quebec government announced an $870 million project to replace the stadium's roof. The new roof, which is expected to take four years to build, will have a 50-year lifespan, allowing the stadium to remain open year-round and double the number of annual visitors to the tourist site.

Because the roof is so fragile, events inside the stadium are canceled if more than three centimeters of snow are expected, limiting the building to 120 to 180 days a year. With more than 20,000 tears, the roof is the stadium's second roof since the opening of the Olympic site. The existing canopy replaced the previous retractable Kevlar canopy installed in 1987, more than a decade after the Summer Games.

The new roof will be fixed, rigid, and will include a clear glass rim around its edge.

According to Dr. Avi Friedman, professor of architecture at McGill University, the Teflon roof can, of course, be modified with cables and other components.

“It's not simple, but I think the use of this kind of material can be found in an age of stability or circularity, when we don't get rid of or throw away,” Friedman said on Tuesday.

It is becoming a habit to reuse building materials instead of throwing them away, he said.

“Our idea was to take the material, use it and then dispose of it, and most construction materials ended up in a landfill,” Friedman said. “The current philosophy is that you design to recycle or recycle the material, not throw it away to waste.”

Students and professionals must apply by the end of May and submit their ideas by June 11. Contest winners will be awarded prizes ranging from $5,000 to $15,000.

This Canadian Press report was first published on April 16, 2024.

Siddhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press