The Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ), a much-maligned Montreal landmark, has often been cited as the worst example of the architectural legacy of the seventies. The ITHQ renewal project involved bringing the building up to operational and technical standards, and updating its envelope, systems and student-service facilities. The key to changing public perception of the building was to give it a “second skin.” The result is a building reborn: what was once pallid, gray and impenetrable is now colourful, luminous and limpid, a change that mirrors the new life the ITHQ has brought to Quebec’s hospitality industry.

This project has unquestionably improved this part of the city, by transforming a famously ugly building on a prominent site into an appropriate image for an important educational institution. Although the theme of over cladding is now a familiar one, the way that different scales and materials of cladding are deployed across the facades have an urban intelligence and give this large building a convincing front facade towards Square St Louis. The double facade is also working environmentally, with heat from the kitchen exhausts providing a thermal buffer in the winter. The lightness in spirit of the new exterior is carried through into the main interiors, which have a scenographic and almost glamorous quality that is appropriate to a school of tourism and hotels.
Adam Caruso