Anyone who says that a building has to be demolished because the plan doesn’t suit modern uses is either lying or incompetent. Just look at this.

One of the greatest white elephants in the world of architecture is the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Designed by French architect Roger Taillibert, it went vastly over budget and the retractible roof never worked. But it is one of the most dramatic precast concrete buildings in the world. It has a dramatic leaning tower that was designed to support the roof, which also enclosed office space that has been empty since it was completed in 1987.

Now this Olympic Tower has been renamed the Montreal Tower, and has been renovated by Provencher_Roy Architects, and is now home to a thousand employees of Quebec financial institution Desjardins. Alex Bozikovic describes it in the Architectural Record:

This thoughtful use of the tower is part of the resurgence of the Olympic site, which was troubled from the start… And yet the stadium is the most recognizable building in the city; it captures the big dreams of midcentury in concrete. Unlike many of its equivalents in other Olympic cities, the whole complex, located next to two subway stops, remains in active use. A multisport facility, including a pool, operates next door; Taillibert’s indoor bicycle arena, or Vélo­drome, was converted into the Biodôme, part of a science museum now under renovation.

Provencher Roy’s Richard Noël tells Bozikovic that “nothing about this was simple. Office uses usually demand regular floor plates, which the building does not have: it is a thin, triangular tower that shrinks and shifts as it rises to a cantilevered tip.”

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