Founded in 1994 by Claude Cormier, CCxA (formerly Claude Cormier + Associés) is a landscape architecture and urban design firm internationally recognized for its unique practice developed over nearly 30 years in the creation of meaningful urban spaces. The firm is rooted in an innovative approach and a singular spirit, a characteristic touch marked by humor, hope, beauty, optimism, dedication and rigour.
CCxA works on large-scale projects across North America and has received more than 100 awards. Serious Fun, The Landscapes of Claude Cormier, the first book entirely dedicated to the firm’s work, written by authors Marc Treib and Susan Herrington, was published by ORO in 2021.
CCxA thrives on participating in complex urban projects that require critical and innovative design solutions. The firm seeks to transcend the public experience and transform spaces of civic life by combining beauty, ecology and a priority for community. Landscape architecture is approached through a high degree of conceptual rigour and solid technical know-how, allowing the firm to imagine new, meaningful and sustainable solutions grounded by an in-depth knowledge of context and landscape phenomena. Pragmatic yet playful, the firm celebrates creativity as a bold hybrid between real and surreal, resulting in beloved moments of the public realm that have continued to endure.
Artwork description
The winter garden in Montreal’s Palais des congrès could have been yet another tropical garden in an oversized greenhouse. But instead of trucking in potted plants and fighting against the local climate to keep them alive, we planted a forest of fifty-two concrete trees, painted lipstick-pink to celebrate the city’s flourishing cosmetic industry and manifest Montreal’s inexhaustible joie de vivre.
Patterned after the hundred-year old maples that line the avenues in the old city, our forest is perfectly adapted to the futuristic environment of the Centre. The hand-cast trunks hover between the concrete slabs of floor and ceiling, on a site straddling the buried Ville-Marie expressway. A positive symbol of the reality of nature in our contemporary world, Lipstick Forest might be artificial, but it’s definitely not fake.
[Source: the Artist’s web site]