APT XVIII No.1 & 2 1986

LES FORGES DU SAINT-MAURICE... WE'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE.
NO, NOT REALLY. HAVE A CLOSER LOOK...

Some of you will start by looking at the pretty pictures. In the following articles on les Forges du Saint- Maurice, the oldest industrial site known in Canada, remember the Franklin House in Philadelphia, and think: "Oh, we've seen this before". Well, have a closer look. The challenge at les Forges du Saint-Maurice was quite at another scale and the solution much more complex.

It all started in the late sixties. The site at les Forges du Saint-Maurice belonged primarily to the Provincial Government of Quebec. Parks Canada owned only a small portion of it. An historical and archaeological programme had already been undertaken by the province. In the early seventies, Parks Canada and the Provincial government of Quebec concluded a deal: the portion of land owned by the province at Les Forges was transferred to the Federal Government in exchange for another historical site owned by Parks Canada in that province: the Mill at Île Perrot.

One of the most extensive historical and archaeological research programmes in the history of Canada thus began. It would last for a decade, and involve dozens of historians and archaeologists not mentioning the other disciplines such as landscape architects, anthropologists, interpreters, curators, architects and engineers. The historians developed a computerized approach to their research, a first in Canada.
The restoration architects and engineers followed that research closely. At one point the picture became clear. We knew how the site had evolved architecturally and we knew or had a pretty good idea of what archaeological remains we would have to protect and offer to the public. The next step was to put together a feasibility study based of several restoration options.

The challenge was interesting. The example that I most often used to try to explain it in a few words is the following: consider a car manufacturing plant in Detroit. It operates for 150 years. Then for various reasons, the industry dies and the population moves to another location. It is discovered by a future generation; only the foundations of the buildings and bits of pieces of the assembly and production lines are found. The restoration architects are then asked for development options. The first question that comes to mind is: what is really the essence of this site? Our answer for Les Forges was the industrial process. The same would apply to the Detroit plant: the car manufacturing process and how it evolved is what is worth passing to the future generations. The buildings have no real architectural significance: four walls, a flat roof. Neither the best nor a significant example of XXth century industrial architecture; simply a shelter, as economical as possible for the industrial process happening underneath it. Do not misquote me: worth saving... when it is there. When it is gone, it should not be reconstructed.

So what were the realistic architectural restoration options offered to Parks Canada in the context of the international Charter of Venice?

Without going into too many details, the following options were considered.

1. Stabilize the remains and expose them one way or another.

An economical approach, everything considered. But, in an area covered by snow almost half the year, the interpretation potential of an archaeological site, consolidated and presented as such has its inconveniences in Canada. Furthermore, exposed ruins in a climate where we have some 350 freeze-thaw cycles per year also presents some difficulties.

2. On the basis of extensive historical and archaeological documentation, reconstruct some of the buildings and a portion of the industrial process.

If one decides to build something over the ruins, partial reconstruction could be argued and done. It was actually the solution preferred by the local population. We discouraged it because we were convinced that the architecture was not worth spending the millions that would have been required to recreate it. A simple wooden building built in the 1700s is one thing. To rebuilt it in the XXth century and open it to the public with the security codes that we have to respect as it becomes a public building, is altogether another thing. Furthermore, the architecture was not really interesting: it was not more interesting than the architecture surrounding the Detroit car manufacturing plant is today. The primary interest was the industrial process.

3. Protect the remains and take a contemporary approach to interpretation of the architecture and the industrial process.

This was the preferred option. To protect the archaeological remains and enable the visitors to see them all year round and to build something over them. That something should be a volumetric expression of the industrial process rather than the reconstruction of buildings because we felt that the industrial process was what was important at Les Forges. By "volumetric expression" we meant that the architectural volumes or forms should express the industrial process itself, in its evolution over a span of 150 years, that the "sheltering" element of the solution should be essentially the mechanisms, not four walls and a pitched roof or any variation thereof.

Management was convinced to adopt solution three after numerous presentations and arguments. An architectural firm was hired to try to translate this concept graphically. After a couple of months of work, it was obvious that it could not come up with a proposal that met our expectations. The concept was quite revolutionary and required a creative design solution which was far beyond the capabilities of most architectural firms at the time and this one in particular.

This is when we decided to try a "limited architectural consultation", not an unusual technique, but one which is not very often used. Parks Canada invited (and paid) five architectural firms, two from Quebec City and three from Montreal, to come up with an original design solution to the selected option. A professional coordinator was hired to ensure that the five firms would be fed the same information and that everything would go smoothly.

It did, and I think that the result is quite original. The three dimensional spatial frames proposed by Gauthier, Guité, Roy, the selected firm, remind us of the architectural forms that once were there. The outstanding achievement of their concept is the way they have resolved the question of the "expressive volumes" for the industrial process: 150 years of industrial process is explained architecturally; THE ARCHITECTURE IS THE INDUSTRIAL PROCESS, AND THE INDUSTRIAL PROCESS BECOMES ARCHITECTURE.

If you read the following articles with this in mind, I am certain that you will agree that this is not something that you have seen before.

Furthermore, the work done by Roch Samson and especially Achille Fontaine to rediscover, understand and explain the various mechanisms is quite unique. It took almost a decade of work and close collaboration with the archaeologists and historians to understand each element of this gigantic puzzle, especially when the 18th century engineers were not exactly doing on site what they were reporting to the King of France in writing and in their drawings (so what else is new?). Their understanding of the mechanisms at Les Forges is not only graphic, but also quantitative in terms of engineering.

The scale and quality of the professional work done at Les Forges and the level of interdisciplinary work made it one of the most sophisticated restoration projects ever undertaken by Parks Canada. What you see at the site is only the tip of this iceberg of knowledge.