Four Seasons Hotel Montreal

Four Seasons Hotel Montreal brings back the city to the forefront of the global luxury hotel conversation. Architecture and design highlight Montreal’s first luxury hotel in decades.
Sensual and elegant interiors by Gilles & Boissier and Philip Hazan. MARCUS Restaurant: modern spaces designed by Atelier Zébulon Perron for chef Marcus Samuelsson. Emblematic eight-floor art installation by Montreal sculptor, Pascale Girardin. Lemay and Sid Lee Architecture contemporary style.

The thoughtfulness and imagination of the team’s creative minds imbues every corner of the hotel’s unique social ecosystem, which englobes graceful and sensual modern guest rooms; lively dining and drinking environments; a spa and wellness sanctuary; the city’s newest venue for top level business meetings and glittering social galas; and an exclusive community of private residences in the heart of Montreal’s Golden Square Mile, steps away from the city’s best shops, galleries, restaurants and museums.

The building by Lemay and Sid Lee Architecture - The elegance of a gold chain on a classic black dress

Designed by Lemay and Sid Lee Architecture, the Four Seasons Hotel Montreal building combines classic elegance and contemporary style. The eighteen-storey multifunctional building includes a 169-room hotel and 18 private residences. It makes an iconic statement with its streamlined, uniquely offset volumes and richly textured accents that embody luxury and refinement.

 Boldly swathed in black, the tower captures light differently on each floor and interacts with Montreal's ever-changing skyline and seasons. The façade’s main volumes are divided according to its functions by a golden bas-relief that folds inwards and spreads vertically, creating a thin blade in the centre of the building that alters its visual aspect. The dark colour of the glass lays a delicate veil over the interior spaces and creates a subdued appearance at nightfall, framed by granite side façades that reflect the rhythm of the glass panels as their textures come to life with the changing ambient light.

Delicate, elegant integration 
Upon entering, visitors are greeted with a spectacular 5.5-meter-high lobby, which extends harmoniously into the adjoining commercial spaces, creating a distinctive overall experience for the hotel's residents and guests. 

At the heart of the building, an immense atrium is open to residents and hotel guests, who can appreciate Pascale Girardin's majestic artistic installation, Contemplation. The atrium’s reflective walls ensure privacy as their mirroring effect magnifies the work of art’s depth, generating an infinite indoor landscape.

Human and urban scale
On De la Montagne St., the lower floors respect the pedestrian scale and delicately link the project to its streetscape, as the remaining three facades integrate on an urban scale with Sainte-Catherine and Crescent Streets and De Maisonneuve Blvd.

 "The overriding importance of integrating the building with its environment is reflected in several ways, sometimes assertive, sometimes subtle, and gives the project its relevance and longevity. The architecture draws its source from the spirit of place, its history, its community, to ultimately enhance the cityscape," said Eric Pelletier, architect, senior partner and design principal at Lemay.
The building's angles define its hospitality, residential and commercial vocations. The first floors are topped by an imposing, 500-guest ballroom with a massive terrasse that offers magnificent views of the Leonard Cohen mural and Mount Royal.

Distinctive juxtaposition
At the tallest part of the building, as of the 14th floor, the facade extends outwards. Crowning the entire building, this overhanging volume is dedicated to prestigious private residences and their spacious terraces offering breathtaking river, mountain and skyline views.

 Boldly swathed in black, the tower captures light differently on each floor and interacts with Montreal's ever-changing character. The effect is accentuated by each façade’s golden bas-relief that divides the main volume according to its interior functions. This golden rift changes the aspect of the building; it emerges through the volume, folds inwards and spreads vertically by creating a thin blade in the centre of the building.

 “The main challenge of the project was to create a space that could properly host such an iconic brand and seamlessly embody its values and ambitions at all levels. The building offers a strong presence in its neighborhood with a volume that reflects the different scales of the surrounding buildings, complemented by a series of insertions, a sought-after materiality and refined details,” said Martin Leblanc, architect, partner at Sid Lee Architecture. 

Intimately connected to the city
The exterior envelope is a glass curtain wall whose opaque elements have been reduced to a minimum. Every component has been carefully considered to enable maximum fenestration; at nightfall, the dark colour of the glass lays a delicate veil over the interior spaces and creates a subdued appearance.

The envelope’s materials also contribute to the project quality. The glass walls’ fine and precise assembly gives rise to an ethereal and almost immaterial impression. The granite of the side facades reflects the rhythm of the glass panels while its varying textures come to life under the influence of ambient light. 

Stately and meticulously sculpted, timeless and modern, the new complex personifies quality and style in the exhilarating, cosmopolitan city that is Montreal.

The design – Sensual interior design by Paris-based Gilles & Boissier in collaboration with Philip Hazan

The hotel’s chic interiors by designers Gilles & Boissier in collaboration with Philip Hazan are a stark contrast to the building’s black glass façade.

 Guests enter through a lobby of white marble, with gold elevators and can discover pink and grey velvet walls that demand to be touched when they access the feminine third floor reception. Graceful and sensual, the 169 guest rooms are imbued with modern classicism, bathed in comforting colours of cloud white, with ethereal backlighting, smooth velvet textures, mirrored surfaces, swathes of marble and bronze, and gold and dark wood accents.

 The feeling of sophisticated, modern luxury is completed by glamourous rose velvet furniture, a circular bar étagère for make-your-own cocktails, minimalist four-poster beds, and corpulent backlit mirrors that reflect the spectacular city views that sip in through floor-to-ceiling windows. The west-facing side of the building offers best views in the city to admire the iconic Leonard Cohen mural.

Atelier Zébulon Perron
MARCUS Restaurant + Terrace | MARCUS
Lounge + Bar

For Four Seasons Hotel Montreal, celebrated Montreal design frim, Atelier Zébulon Perron helped develop a new concept: The Social Square. This sprawling third-floor Social Square encompasses both the hotel’s lobby as well as MARCUS Restaurant + Terrace and MARCUS Lounge + Bar, by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson.

 MARCUS lounge, bar, restaurant and terrace are four distinct, immersive worlds that overlap and complement each other, while each seamlessly blending into the hotel’s contemporary architecture. Sophisticated yet approachable, refined yet organic, they fuse design and experience based on social ergonomics and contemporary taste. They are inspired by circadian rhythms in which each moment is imagined to be a novel, one-of-a-kind experience, from the floating velvet bench in the lounge to the prismatic lighting cast by the crystal wall, the leather banquettes in the restaurant and the terrace’s sun-drenched tables overlooking the city.

 In a reference to chef Samuelsson’s seafood creations, the restaurant and terrace suggest a theme reminiscent of the ocean. The restaurant’s charm is a combination of opposites, balancing elegance and warmth with minimalism and modernity. In contrast, the intimate night bar gives the impression of entering an enchanted forest. With quirky features, such as the crab exoskeleton in an infinity glass cube that greets visitors in the foyer and the colourful cold room display of seafood charcuterie at the restaurant’s entrance, the designers remind us that, at MARCUS, it is ultimately the cuisine of chef Marcus Samuelsson that takes center stage.

Materials: marble, terrazzo, brass, prismatic glass, white oak, velvet.

Art - An eight-floor art installation by Montrealer Pascale Girardin
Tucked away inside the building and only accessible to hotel guests, Pascale Girardin’s floral-inspired installation cascades down the building’s open-air atrium. Suspended in the hotel’s private open-air atrium, the sculpture, entitled Contemplation, creates an elegant counterpoint to the hotel’s linear architecture by evoking nature in the heart of the luxurious urban establishment.

Made of lightweight aluminum, the all-white installation with gilded accents of 24-karat gold is made up of over ninety floral suspensions ranging from thirty centimeters to one meter in diameter. These garlands cascade through the atrium from the Eighteenth to the ninth floor, reflecting the cycles of nature—the blossoms of spring flowers, the movement of petals adrift on a summer breeze, the spill of autumnal leaves and the lightness of falling snow.

Technical sheet

LOCATION: Montreal, Canada

ARCHITECTS: Lemay in collaboration with Sid Lee Architecture

PROJECT COMPLETION DATE: June 2019 

SURFACE AREA: 498 000 pi2 (46,600 m2) 

BUDGET: CDN $250M 

NUMBER OF UNITS:
68 hotel rooms
18 private residences 

PROJECT TEAM

· Eric Pelletier, Architect, Partner - Design Principal, Lemay

· Michel Aubé, Architect, Associate, Project Director, Lemay

· Sébastien Voyer, Architect, Production Manager, Lemay

· Manuel R. Cisneros, Design Architect, Sid Lee Architecture

· Valentin Guirao, Design Architect, Lemay

· Geneviève Guay, Architect, Design Technician and Site Supervisor, Lemay

· Rémi Chabot, Technologist, BIM Coordinator, Lemay

· Martin Leblanc, Architect, Partner, Sid Lee Architecture

· André Cardinal, Architect, Partner, Lemay 

INTERIOR DESIGN 

Condo Designer: Philip Hazan Design inc. – Philip Hazan Design Inc.

Hotel Designer: Gilles & Boissier et Philip Hazan Design inc

Level 4 Restaurant-Bar Designer: Atelier Zébulon Perron

ENGINEERING 

Structural Engineer: Elema 

Mechanical Engineer: Bouthillette Parizeau

LIGHTING DESIGNER 

Lighting Consultant: GMLD | Granville McAnear Lighting Design 

SUPPLIERS 

Curtain Wall: Groupe Lessard 

Precast Concrete: BPDL Béton préfabriqué 

Aluminum Panel: Les industries Panfab 

CONTRACTOR 
Pomerleau 

WORK OF ART
Pascale Girardin