Nun’s Island is part of the Hochelaga archipelago located immediately southwest of Montreal. It’s urbanization followed the opening of the Champlain bridge in 1962 under an ambitious master plan carried out by Metropolitan Structures, a real estate giant who had built numerous projects in Chicago with the collaboration of Mies van der Rohe.

The new community included three high rise apartment buildings by Mies office and it led, in 1966, to a commission from Standard Oil to design a prototypical gas station.

"Nun’s Island is part of the Hochelaga archipelago located immediately southwest of Montreal. It’s urbanization followed the opening of the Champlain bridge in 1962 under an ambitious master plan carried out by Metropolitan Structures, a real estate giant who had built numerous projects in Chicago with the collaboration of Mies van der Rohe. The new community included three high rise apartment buildings by Mies office and it led, in 1966, to a commission from Standard Oil to design a prototypical gas station.

The station consists of two distinct volumes, one for car servicing and the other for sales, with a central pump island covered by a low steel roof that unifies the composition. The beams and columns were made of welded steel plates painted black that contrast with the white enamelled steel deck and bare fluorescent tubes.

Over the years, the interiors have been modified to incorporate a car wash on the sales side, the finishes, built-in furniture and equipment have been replaced and the custom made pumps removed. It ceased to be commercially operated in 2008 and the city of Montreal listed it as a heritage building in 2009 before initiating the project of a youth and senior activity centre. This simple program requires an open space for each group to congregate and participate in communal activities.

The senior group occupies the larger volume to the benefit of its sixty members who play bridge, prepare communal meals, dance or invite lecturers. Stacking chairs and tables allow multiple configurations of the room.

The younger group occupies the smaller volume. Teenagers meet there daily to play games, listen to music, organize parties and events under the supervision of educators.
 

Original ESSO petrol station by Mies van der Rohe.

The first architectural task was to meticulously restore the envelope of the building by dismantling and repairing the corroded curtain wall, repointing the brick work and repainting the structure.

The second architectural task was to develop strategies for the new mechanical and electrical needs that would not affect the integrity of the heritage values. We choose to implement solutions originating from the sustainable development field of research to achieve this goal. The new geothermal wells under the asphalt around the building provide the major part of the energy required to operate the building but they also radically diminish the size of the equipment and eliminate the need for a cooling tower on the roof of the building. The new stainless steel gas pumps are in fact air in take and out take devices that are linked by underground ducts to the HVAC system. They replace the louvers that we would have had to install on the building and this solution contributes to the pre-cooling or heating of the fresh air admitted, the canadian well effect.

The third task was to radicalize the building with the new interventions in order to emphasize its inherent qualities and the essential values that it embodies. Formal unity and simplicity is enhanced by making everything black (teenagers side) or white (elders side). The strength of the roof as a unifying device is reinforced by using the same rhythm of linear fluorescent lighting into the interior spaces (T-5 tubes on dimmers). Transparency is augmented by opening completely the view from one end to the other on the long axis and by using low-iron glass. Specific uses and functions have been integrated into freestanding built-in units that are formally mute to dissimulate the contingencies of daily life.

The project is not about the faithful restoration of a monument. It is an interpretation trying to touch and communicate the essence of an artistic vision formulated by someone else in response to a world that is no longer the same. Musicians do this every day." (txt Les architectes FABG.)

CREDITS

Project's name.- Reconversion de la station service de Mies van der Rohe à l'Île des Soeurs Localisation.- 201 rue Berlioz, Verdun, Québec.
Client.- Arrondissement de Verdun.
Architect.- Éric Gauthier.
Team.- Marc Paradis, Dominique Potvin, Jaime Lopez, Steve Montpetit.
Engineers.- Aecom
Builder.- Norgéreq
Cost.- $ Canada 1.4 M .
End of project.- September 2011
Source.- v2com.biz

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aquisgran the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to USA and where he was until his death. He was also considerate a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, he always kept tabs of the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.

In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterward he move to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural technics and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.

In 1912 he openned his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects as Le Corbusier, in his first years he already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.

In 1913 se move to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during the World War I.

In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as member to the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition, being his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.

In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.

In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department in Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Intitute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).

In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned other building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.

In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).

From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.

He died in Chicago the 17th of August if 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to next generations.

The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.
 

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Éric Gauthier, partner in Les Architectures FABG since 1988, featuring the conception of cultural projects that have been awarded for the sensitivity expressed in relation to the context and the innovative character of the implemented technical solutions. As an architect he has directed projects such as the Théatre de Quat'sosu, Montréal (2008) awarded with the USITT Architecture Merit Award in 2009 among other awards, new spaces for the Circ du Soleil in Bordeaux (2007) or the restoration of a gas station by Mies Van der Rohe in Nuns Island, Canada (2009).
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Published on: March 5, 2012
Cite: "Remodelation of Mies van der Rohe petrol station" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/remodelation-mies-van-der-rohe-petrol-station> ISSN 1139-6415
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