Warm hospitality ambience

Hotel restaurant/bar reno embracing ghosts of Expo ’67

Germain Hotels’ flagship property, Le Germain Hotel, in downtown Montreal, Que., has undergone a major renovation that both sheds and embraces its Expo ’67-era brutalist concrete architecture roots. Occupying the first two floors now is the welcoming ambiance of Le Boulevardier restaurant and Le Flâneur Bar Lounge, comprising the food and beverage portion of a $30 million project that included adding six floors of rooms to the hotel complex.

Atelier Zébulon Perron, an interior design firm based in Montreal, designed this approximately 8,000 square feet portion on two separate levels, including the ground floor bar/lounge, the first-floor restaurant, and the staircase to connect the spaces.

Lead designer Zébulon Perron, whose parents had met at Expo ’67, wanted to preserve what he could from the period when Montreal was “opening its arms to the world. When we did the demolition, we selectively revealed some aspects of the structure and concrete casing details on the ceiling.

“Whatever we could expose we did and then the rest of it was totally redone. This is the way we approach design in our practice in general in the studio — we like to keep and reveal elements of the past.”

In addition to the original concrete, materials used on the project included marble, walnut, copper, steel, chrome, leather and velvet. The design firm repositioned the hotel’s centrally-located staircase closer to the front desk area, inviting patrons to explore beyond the confines of the lobby. Rising up through the ceiling and anchored from above, the steel structure and hardwood steps of the new staircase are framed in a transparent wall of steel rods, tactically illuminated to make it as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional.

The staircase leading from the lobby to the first-floor restaurant bridges a balanced décor, ascending into a space illuminated by an abundance of natural light. Exposed concrete beams rise above the restaurant’s contemporary décor, which mirrors Le Flâneur’s abundant use of dark woods and marble countertops. Far from brutalist, the warmth of a retro ambiance is combined with floor-to-ceiling windows providing magnificent views overlooking the horizons of President Kennedy Avenue and the downtown streets below. The floor-to-ceiling windows also serve as an inward portal to the restaurant for curious passers-by, designed to complement the restaurant’s patronage of hotel guests with an influx of external clients.

“From the client perspective, they were very, very pleased with the result,” says Perron, whose firm has collaborated with Germain Hotels in the past. Germain Montreal also had a longstanding clientele that it didn’t want to alienate with the renovations.

“The general manager was telling me that some of them were worried that we would change things too much. But they have received an overwhelmingly positive response from their clients, and they are very happy about that.”

WATCH: Featuring Zébulon Perron, see Le Germain Hotel Montreal restaurant and bar projects come to life in these videos

https://youtu.be/UHY-D4Z6dOg