A student housing project combining heritage conservation with facadism, the new 19-story LINK design from ACDF Architecture, is now ready for use in Montreal’s Shaughnessy Village. 

Just steps away from Concordia University and other local colleges, the project provides much-needed affordable housing options for students while reusing facades culled from the demolition of three existing Victorian structures with only a minimal sacrifice to its programmatic efficiency.

“Such a rehabilitation mission can generate an interesting return on investment for developers, and this approach, more sensitive to the context and built heritage, would have the merit of being much more contributive to the community, and thus a very interesting asset for the marketing of this residential rental project,” the firm’s president Maxime-Alexis Frappier explains in a press release.

The preservation of the past is such a key consideration here granted the extensiveness of Montreal’s post-1950s remake in which it relinquished a great deal of its French colonial heritage and material character to the interests of then-current social needs and development-driven modern architecture.

A "quilt-like assembly" of existing dormers combined with gabled, low-arched, and rectangular openings grants this composition richness and its own unique grammar encased by a projected black granite frame and precast concrete building envelope. 

The three rehabilitated heritage facades serve as a precept for engagement with the outside urban fabric of the neighborhood surrounding. This trait, which is endemic to the city's architecture, embodies the sensitive approach to development that the firm has strived for since being established by Frappier, Joan Renaud, and Etienne Laplante Courchesne in 2006.

“On the eve of a possible unprecedented acceleration in the granting of building permits to encourage the construction of residential projects in response to the housing crisis prevailing across Canada, we feel it is essential to emphasize the importance of creating private projects that contribute from an architectural and urban point of view,” Frappier added for context.

The project was completed in the fall of 2022 and boasts a mixture of 122 studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units.