Montreal’s Olympic Stadium now home to stunning offices

When architects designed Montreal’s Olympic Stadium ahead of the 1976 Games, they almost certainly wouldn’t have envisaged that its tower it would one day become a stunning and sought-after office space for Canadian workers.

And yet after lying vacant and dormant for more than 30 years, that’s exactly where the tower’s future now lies, after a remarkable internal and external refurbishment.

Originally designed to host sporting associations and their off-track activities, the 165m inclined tower hasn’t been used for that purpose since 1987, instead sitting empty.

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But after its major renovation and redesign, more than 1000 office workers are expected to call the building home, with many of them from Canada’s leading cooperative financial company Desjardins Group.

Glass has replaced many of the tower’s concrete facings.

In an enormous undertaking, almost all of the Montreal Tower’s mechanical systems had to be renovated to bring them up to code and standards.

But the biggest challenge lay in removing the tower’s concrete facings to make way for a glass curtain wall, which now covers 60% of the facade.

The Montreal Stadium tower remains one of the city’s most iconic structures.

The curtain walls cover a staggering 25,761sqm, and while clearly improving the tower’s visual appeal externally, they also help to transform it into an inhabitable workspace, with abundant light for the 40,000sqm of office space that has now been opened up.

Provencher_Roy partner architect Anik Mandalian says the bold new design was conceived to enhance the tower’s place within the surrounding landscape.

An artist’s impression of one of the new internal spaces within the stadium tower.

“There being no other tall building in proximity to the tower, the sole reflection is that of the sky. Depending on the time of day, one will see the sky or the structure,” Mandalian says.

To this day the structure remains the world’s tallest inclined tower.

The tower is expected to be home to 1000 office workers.