Architect Jean Verville wins coveted Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ invited competition for the development of Museum Avenue. During summer 2016, his elegant installation Dance Floor offers a lively landscape animated by an exuberant trompe-l’oeil. With Verville’s proposal the participants experiment movement, both free and structured by the course, to surrender to the pleasure of an impulsive action or casual wandering. Welcoming varied and unforgettable performances, Dance Floor shines a new dynamism to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ area.

With paving made of more than 5,000 footprints, Dance Floor installation composed a stunning mosaic reminiscent of hammered gold, nod to the theme of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition Pompeii. The gesture, of an equally unexpected as sensational simplicity, traces some chaos proper to crowd and invite passersby to improvise steps on this huge dancing floor. Shaping a new urban intersection, architect Jean Verville transforms the pedestrian street into a giant interactive activity enlivening downtown Montreal with formidable improvised dances, while encouraging the visitor to build its customized tour within the works of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Sculpture Garden.

The architect

The practice of Jean Verville is on the fringe of mainstream architecture. For each proposal, architecture, design, museum installation or object, the architect uses the architectural promenade as material to develop the spatial qualities of his experiments. In addition to its award-winning practice and his significant international publications Jean Verville continues his investigations on architectural design process through a PhD at Université du Québec à Montréal.

Client: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Typology: Urban installation
Location: Montreal, Canada
Superficy: 3.000 square feet
Year of conception: 2015
Year of construction: 2016