Expressway Aesthetics Montreal in the 1960S

e ssaY | essai Ex PrEssway aEsthEtics Montreal in the 1960s MgT Ar ArE E. HODgES is a Professor in > Margaret E. HodgeS the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal. Her research focuses on Canadian architecture and urban planning, the work of women architects, and the aesthetics of architecture. n this paper I examine the Modern Iaesthetics of the urban expressway as it applies to the Turcot Complex in Montreal, built during the 1960s and early 1970s. The aesthetic value of the elevated expressway was understood in terms of its functionality, to ensure the smooth flow of traffic and the overall working of the city. The possibility of moving at high speeds was part of the aesthetic experience as it contributed to a new way of seeing the world. I argue that the Turcot Complex can be understood in terms of a functionalist aesthetics articulated in the urban theory of Blanche and Daniel van Ginkel of van Ginkel Associates, Montreal. I suggest that the phenomenological experience of the elevated expressway, when functioning as first designed, continues to express the positive qualities as articulated in the work of such perceptive theorists as Kevin Lynch in the 1960s. I compare the van Ginkels’ approach with what I call the green aesthetics of today’s approach to urban mobility in North American cities. Montreal is currently deciding on how to handle the deteriorating Turcot Complex and I look at some of the options being debated, including the levelling of the elevated system. In postwar North America, the cross-town expressway was considered a tool to solve the mobility problems of dense intercity traffic. An example is the Montreal plan for an East-West Expressway of 1948 (fig. 1). Designed as a limited access route, the expressway was to function as a multipurpose traffic facilitator: for traffic decongestion in the downtown core, as a transportation network connecting the Fg ni . 1. etwork of traffic ways. an east-west exPressway, montreal, city of montreal Planning dePartment, 1948. | city of montréal archiVes section. JSSAC | JSÉAC 37 > No 1 > 2012 > 45-55 45 Margaret e. hodgeS > E ssay | Essai Fg mi . 2. etroPolitan bouleVard. urban transPortation deVeloPments in eleVen Fg mi . 3. etroPolitan bouleVard at the décarie interchange. urban canadian metroPolitan areas, ottawa, canadian good roads association, 1968, transPortation deVeloPments in eleVen canadian metroPolitan P. 10. | reProduced with the exPress written authorization of the transPortation association of canada. areas, ottawa, canadian good roads association, P. 10. | reProduced with the exPress written authorization of the transPortation association of canada. major sectors within the city, and as a city Thus the expressway plan was threefold: and continuity, and had led to urban bypass route. For city planners, designing it was necessary for traffic control, for sprawl, in the form of ribbon develop- an urban expressway often meant choos- opening up new development, and for ment and monotonous suburbs. The ing the path of least resistance by avoid- urban rehabilitation. The expressway Team Ten members of the Congrès inter- ing the dense core of the city and routing would have to fit with the existing arter- national d’architecture moderne (CIAM) along the waterfront.1 In the Montreal ial system and geographic elements of began working on a theory of mobility plan, a major advantage of a waterfront the mountain, the river, and the Lachine in which the urban expressway would be route was the non-interference factor. Canal system. It could not interfere with lifted from its ameliorative function to a It was suggested that stable residential existing stable neighbourhoods, but unifying function, both visually and sym- neighbourhoods, parks, playgrounds, was seen as ideal for “blight” removal. bolically, to make the form of the city com- churches, and shopping centres would Primary, too, was the enjoyment factor of prehensible, while ensuring the smooth not be affected by the new expressway. driving, by “insuring [drivers] the freedom functioning of the traffic network.4 In Although traffic relief was given top pri- of movement necessary to make Montreal 1960, Team Ten members Blanche and ority, other criteria included the possibil- a pleasant city in which to live and work.”3 Daniel van Ginkel were hired as con- ity of shaping future development and The emphasis placed on expressway plan- sultants in the Montreal Department importantly, eliminating blight in slum ning as a tool for rehabilitation would of Planning.5 Drawing on the theory of areas. The report stated: result in major demolitions of functioning structuralism and the space-time theory neighbourhoods when the plan was of Sigfried Giedion, they developed an By running through slums and blighted city implemented as the “Lalonde and Valois aesthetics of mobility based on the posi- blocks, construction will be less costly as Plan” (1959). tive aspects of the urban expressway as regards land acquisition and will at the an art form, and as an essential unifying same time enhance the value of the adja- By the 1950s the automobile was seen element of the parts of the city to the cent areas. if the expressway is conceived by certain critics as the great destroyer greater whole. They developed an aes- along those principles, it can aid in urban of cities. Accommodating the car in the thetics of the city based on two scales of rehabilitation, without impairing its primary city through the creation of major road movement, the scale of the pedestrian function of meeting predetermined traffic systems had destroyed many essential and the scale of the automobile. Their needs.2 urban qualities, including human scale theory can be understood, within the 46 JSSAC | JSÉAC 37 > No 1 > 2012 Margaret e. hodgeS > E ssay | Essai context of the van Ginkels’ rerouting of and twenty-seven industries. Much of the the East-West Expressway plan, designed surrounding land would be changed to by Lalonde and Valois. parking lots and green-space, or rezoned for industry.8 The Lalonde and Valois plan That plan was for a modern, elevated, reflected the Montreal Plan of 1948 in its and minimum-access expressway that approach to urban rehabilitation through would complete the existing form of the the clearance of “blighted” areas. The modern expressway network already proposal to replace communities with under construction by then. This included parking lots and green spaces amounted the Metropolitan Boulevard, the elevated to a “sanitization” of the urban environ- freeway that would open in 1960, as the ment that was current in postwar plan- Montreal portion of the Trans-Canada ning.9 The van Ginkels proposed a new Highway (fig. 2). The Metropolitan was route that they thought would be less connected with the Décarie Interchange, disruptive of the city form. They believed an elevated cloverleaf structure also that the construction of the East-West under construction to freeway stan- Expressway was inevitable, but that it dards (fig. 3). The Décarie Boulevard was possible to design with the auto- that would eventually open in 1966 mobile in a way that would add aesthetic would continue south as a below grade value to the city. That would require an route that would be integrated with aesthetics of mobility.10 the Turcot Interchange and eventually with the Champlain Bridge. The Lalonde The van Ginkels drew on Sigfried Giedion’s and Valois study proposed the major space-time concept in his aesthetics of the Fg wi . 4. est side deVeloPment including henry hudson Parkway, 1934-1937. | new york city east-west route across Montreal and an American Parkway system of the 1930s. dePartment of Parks and recreation. interchange with the Décarie, and the For Giedion, the beauty of the Parkway Champlain Bridge. The Champlain Bridge was expressed in the construction of the was also under construction according to motorway for uninterrupted movement. indistinguishable from the land itself. plans by Lalonde and Valois, and would In the theory of functionalism, beauty Devices such as centre garden strips cam- open in 1962. Finally, according to the arises in aesthetic judgment according to ouflage oncoming cars and the driver is 1948 plan for an East-West Expressway, the fitness of the object to its purpose or liberated by the total sense of freedom the elevated expressway would be routed use—in the case of the Parkway, that is from interruptions to the smooth flow along the harbourfront. When the mobility. Giedion argued that the driver of movement by light signals and cross- Lalonde and Valois plan was introduced experiences aesthetic value in movement. traffic. As such, the experience is exhila- to the public in 1960, the van Ginkels In terms of the Parkway, it is not the con- rating as if hovering above the graceful identified three major problems.6 First struction as abstract sculpture that is the sweeping grades of the Parkway, but at the expressway would be elevated over object of appreciation, although sculp- the same time, grounded. However, the Commissioner’s Street, the harbourfront tural forms are aesthetical from a single Parkway was not meant to penetrate the road, effectively cutting the city off point of view. The aesthetic experience city, only follow along its edges (fig. 4).11 from the waterfront. Secondly, much of arises from the kinaesthetic effect of the old city, including significant historic moving over the surface of the road, In a special issue of Canadian Art buildings, would be demolished for the and seeing in movement. The automobile (1962) dedicated to the automobile, inclusion of the expressway entrance driver gains a new freedom to control the van Ginkels explored the idea of and exit ramps. Finally, many residential speed, and the aesthetic experience is space-time as it applied to expressway neighbourhoods and small businesses revealed by movement as space-time design in the urban environment and would be destroyed.7 The Lalonde and feeling.

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