LIPSTICK FOREST
MONTREAL (QUEBEC), CANADA

LIPSTICK FOREST

MONTREAL (QUEBEC), CANADA

Project
Winter garden at the Palais des congrès de Montréal

Client
Société immobilière du Québec, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Year
1999-2002

Status
Built

The winter garden in Montreal’s Palais des congrès could have been yet another tropical garden in an oversized greenhouse. But instead of trucking in potted plants and fighting against the local climate to keep them alive, we planted a forest of fifty-two concrete trees, painted lipstick-pink to celebrate the city’s flourishing cosmetic industry and manifest Montreal’s inexhaustible joie de vivre.

Patterned after the hundred-year old maples that line the avenues in the old city, our forest is perfectly adapted to the futuristic environment of the Centre. The hand-cast trunks hover between the concrete slabs of floor and ceiling, on a site straddling the buried Ville-Marie expressway. A positive symbol of the reality of nature in our contemporary world, Lipstick Forest might be artificial, but it’s definitely not fake.

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Surface
700 m2 (0.2 acres)

Prizes

Canadian Society of Landscape Architects
National Merit - Lipstick Forest, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Montréal Institut of design
Landscape architecture Laureat – Lipstick Forest, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Credits
1. Jean-François Vézina, January 2003
2. Elevation, CC+A, June 2000
3. Plan, CC+A, 2001
4. Jean-François Vézina, January 2003
5. Jean-François Vézina, January 2003
6. Jean-François Vézina, January 2003
7. Inspiration
8. Conceptual montage, Jean-François Vézina + René Clément, 2003
9. Elevation - detail, CC+A, June 2000
10. Icon, René Clément, 2003
11. Icon, CC+A, 2003
12. Elevation, CC+A + Jean-François Vézina, 2003
13. Jean-François Vézina, January 2003
14. Emmanuel Galland, March 2005
15. Marc Cramer, 2003