Bus-terminal project in Berri-UQAM.
The Gazette, Montreal, February 18, 2006 By Henry Aubin
A big project which includes an office tower, student residences, pavilions for classrooms and finally a new bus terminal will be built for the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. This project has many expectations, however it has two problems.
The first one is traffic. A differences than the new building of engineer and visual arts for Concordia University which has zero parking spaces, the UQAM wants its project to include 500 underground parking spaces, never mind that the project will be directly in the Berri-UQAM metro station. This idea came to prevent the excessive traffic in the station. Due to the fact that three lines converges on it which makes it the most accessible station in the entire metro network. UQAM does not focus its project like Concordia University which wants to show concern for the environment and to encourage public transit use.
The second problem with UQAM’s project is building design. The criticism said that UQAM has already built one new campus that is an esthetic blight, which says goodbye to the tradition that a university campus should be warm and architecturally stimulating. Henry Aubin wrote: “a preliminary version of the new campus is frosty and impersonal”. As a result of criticism, UQAM says it will make public a new design in March.
Nevertheless, the area around the bus terminal is underdeveloped, but will change. The CHUM hospital and the Grande Biblioteque will join the campus.

Every project always has problem in the phase of design. The traffic and design could testify and urge changes. Concordia building focused its project in the environment, but solution about parking has to resolve. Buildings have to adapt for cities’ conditions. The success of the building is to mix city and citizens and I think that is the problem here.