Three firms, Daoust Lestage, Williams Asselin Ackaoui, and Option Am'nagement, weave together multiple narratives to create Quebec's Promenade Samuel-de Champlain.
Travelers visiting Quebec City this summer who haven’t been there for some time, and who approach by car along the Saint Lawrence from the West, will find a stretch of the river’s waterfront completely transformed. Just past the Pont de Québec and the Pont Pierre-Laporte, what had once been a largely industrial landscape dotted with petroleum storage tanks is now a leafy linear park filled with pedestrians, runners, and cyclists. This 1.5-mile-long, $63 million (U.S.) section of the Promenade Samuel-de Champlain is part of a vision for a continuous emerald swath that will eventually extend another 6 miles to an area of shoreline near the fortified walls of the Old City.
Completed in June 2008, this first phase was designed by a multidisciplinary consortium of Daoust Lestage and Williams Asselin Ackaoui, both of Montreal, and local firm Option Aménagement, for the Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec, a planning and development agency. One of the project’s primary programmatic objectives was to provide access to the riverfront where there had been none. With this goal in mind, the designers’ first major move was to relocate the existing roadway that had previously hugged the water’s edge. By introducing gradual curves and pulling the four-lane artery away from the shore at a few key spots, the team was able to recover significant stretches of the waterfront for public use, explains Réal Lestage, the consortium’s project director. The introduction of these curves, along with the integration of parallel parking spots, also helps slow traffic so that drivers can enjoy the view, adds Renée Daoust.
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