NUNS' ISLAND APARTMENTS
Montreal, Canada, 1966-69
The three apartment buildings are situated on an island in the St. Lawrence River a short distance from the centre of Montreal. The development of the island only began in the 1960s and Mies was able to position his slab-like apartment buildings close to the water's edge in a park-like landscape. Like Highfield House in Baltimore, the buildings are made of concrete and here too the exposed loadbearing structural frame steps back slightly at intervals towards the top of the building. This, however, was the first time that Mies incorporated balconies into high-rise buildings. As whit the service station nearby, he cooperated with local architecture offices.* David Cronenberg later used the buildings as the setting for his film Shivers.
* The two facing buildings were built together with Edgar Tornay and the building that stands to one side with Philip D. Bobrow.
MIES VAN DER ROHE - THE BUILT WORK
Carsten Krohn
pag. 228
http://miessociety.org/mies/projects/
