Created in 2007, Place Publique is a space for visual arts and the public, set up every summer on Ottawa Street in front of the Fonderie Darling buildings. Site-specific artworks, performances, and workshops activate and transform the space into an interactive platform that brings together artists and citizens. Through a variety of activities, audiences have unique aesthetic experiences in a friendly and festive open-air environment. By creating this site of expression, the Fonderie Darling affirms the role that art plays in enriching the community’s well-being and quality of life.
The Fonderie Darling aims to make Place Publique a permanent project active throughout the year. Never-ending construction, constant noise, visual, and air pollution, and ever-present cars have made it necessary to establish a space dedicated to people in a neighbourhood increasingly disrupted by the construction of new towers.
The Ville-Marie Borough has heard our message. Following a political decision taken by the administration of Mayor Valérie Plante, the government representatives of the City of Montreal have been mandated to create a permanent Place Publique. Alongside a collective authorized to setting up and managing Place Publique, Quartier Éphémère is excited about the prospect of extending the activities of the Fonderie Darling into the public sector and providing a cleared space around its heritage buildings. Therefore, the organization has assembled key players from the neighbourhood and public sector, including the fields of art, ecology, and urbanism, to work together according to a model of co-construction to carry out this ambitious project. The City of Montreal has appointed landscape architects from the firm Daoust Lestage to design the project.
Conceived as a space of collaborative development from concept to realization, Place Publique will finally achieve its calling and become a portion of pavement re-appropriated by artists and citizens.
Quartier Éphémère warmly thanks the public for the invaluable support, thanks to which a Permanent Place Publique is about to become a reality.
The Fonderie Darling would like to thank ODEA Montreal for its financial support of the annual programming on Place Publique.
La Fonderie Darling tient à remercier ODEA Montréal pour son soutien financier dans la réalisation de la programmation annuelle sur la Place Publique.