KANVA of Montreal, Canada, has been shortlisted at the 2015 World Architecture Festival that will be held in Singapore for two noteworthy projects: Edison Residence and City Fields (Entre les rangs). KANVA is a finalist alongside some of the world’s top architectural practices, including Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, Herzog & de Meuron, OMA, Buro Ole Scheeren, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Rafael Viñoly Architects, BIG, Grimshaw Architects, Heatherwick Studio and Carlos Ott. 

Firm partners, Tudor Radulescu and Rami Bebawi will be traveling to Singapore this November to present these two projects to an international jury and join architects from around the world to participate in the three-day festival. A winner of each of the 31 categories will be selected and announced over the course of the festival, plus one of the winning projects will be chosen as the World Building of the Year.

Edison Residence is shortlisted in the Hotel and Leisure category alongside projects from Turkey, Malaysia, Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Botswana, Monaco and China. Edison Residence is a boutique student residence that hosts 36 students each year from around the world studying at one of the many universities in Montreal. The residence is unique for its innovative facade that uses photoengraved concrete to visually animate the historical fire that left the land abandoned since the early 20^th century.
A sequence of 20 stills was extracted from the film: Montreal Fire Department on Runners, a motion picture by Thomas Edison depicting several cycles of horse-drawn sleighs responding to a fire in the winter of 1901 just north of the site. Animated by light and shadow, each photoengraved concrete panel is perceived in an ever-changing, dynamic manner. As students occupy or visitors pass by the site, the horse-drawn carriages come to life and the viewer is temporarily transported to a past era. Beyond the facade, the project’s main backdrop throughout is equally concrete – left exposed – while bright yellow accents bring a playful touch to this youthful environment.

City Fields (Entre les rangs) is shortlisted in the Urban Projects category alongside projects from China, Mexico, Thailand, France, Singapore and Denmark. City Fields was the winning entry of the 4^th annual Luminotherapy competition, an initiative of the Quartiers des Sspectacles Partnership, to create an immersive experience that reinterprets light therapy during the dreary winter months in Nordic conditions. Situated on a large urban concourse,  the Place des Festival in the Quartier des spectacles in downtown Montreal, the installation examines at an urban-scale the physiological and psychological benefits of providing the public a rallying point where they can go outside to get fresh air and the essential exposure to natural light. The installation juxtaposes fields in the city; accentuating the relationship between the natural and the artificial environment and the site’s agricultural history. The project imagines a contemporary field made from a multiplicity of reflectors on flexible rods, which are activated by different light sources, people and natural elements, giving an overall luminous effect. Over 80 000 people visited City Fields during the period when it was open to the public in 2014 (December 10, 2013 to February 2, 2014). The project was designed and produced in collaboration with Boris Dempsey, Pierre Fournier, Aménagement Côté Jardin, Udo Design, Patrick Watson and Marouane Sahbi.

This past year KANVA is also the recent recipient of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada’s Emerging Architectural Practice Award for 2015 and additionally began their mandate to re-design the Montreal Biodôme museum, as part of the winning team for the international competition held in 2014. Visit www.kanva.ca for more information on the firm’s work.