Memory and Future:
The Architecture of Community Space
Course: McGill University - School of Architecture - ARCH 673
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Date: Winter 2023
Instructors: Shane Laptiste and Rebecca Taylor
The studio explored the narrative possibilities that could exist in architecture designed for community uses. Building upon the legacy of the site of the former Negro Community Centre / Charles H. Este Cultural Centre (NCC), students will take a human-centered approach, expanding their analytical and representational toolkit to interrogate architecture's capacity to support issues of social and environmental justice. The NCC is a community space with historical roots in Montreal’s Black community, specifically an anglophone community that took root in the early 20th century.
The design of a community-centered environment that is rooted in Montreal’s Black communities, an architecture of the Black community, has the potential to act as a space of living memory. A space rooted in history while addressing current and future challenges. This act of remembrance, specifically as it relates to the complexities of the site, the neighbourhood and the presence of Black communities in the Americas, presents an opportunity to reflect on a critical architectural discourse. Through an architectural lens, the studio will engage with topics including gentrification, post-colonialism, reparations, community-led design and Afro-futurism.
The building housing the NCC, located at 2035 rue Coursol, was initially constructed in 1890 as the West End Methodist Church. The NCC, founded at the Union United Church in the 1920s, was an active and significant Community Centre serving the city's Black community. It operated on Rue Coursol from its merger with the Iverley Community Centre in 1955 until 1993. The center included offices, a gymnasium, a sewing room, a kitchen, a library, and the Walker Credit Union office. The center, both at this site on Coursol and at its original home, was a hub for the community and supported jazz greats Oscar Peterson, Oliver Jones, and teacher Daisy Sweeney. It initially focused on youth programming and eventually hosted a daycare, summer camps, dance and music lessons, after-school programs, a seniors program, and language courses.1 After laying dormant for many years, a wall collapsed, and the building was demolished in 2014.2 The site was subsequently sold by the NCC to a developer, and the site has remained fenced off and vacant ever since. In December of 2022, the City of Montreal purchased the site to return it to a community use.