engineering

Place Bonaventure

Place Bonaventure is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Place Bonaventure rather than just read about it. In short: Place Bonaventure (French pronunciation: [plas bɔnavɑ̃tyʁ]) is an office, exhibition, and hotel complex in Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada, adjacent to the city's Central Station. At 288,000 m2 (3,100,000 sq ft) in size, Place Bonaventure was the second-largest commercial building in the world at the time of its completion in 1967.

Key takeaways

Place Bonaventure belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Place Bonaventure to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Place Bonaventure from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Place Bonaventure (French pronunciation: [plas bɔnavɑ̃tyʁ]) is an office, exhibition, and hotel complex in Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada, adjacent to the city's Central Station. At 288,000 m2 (3,100,000 sq ft) in size, Place Bonaventure was the second-largest commercial building in the world at the time of its completion in 1967. It is one of very few buildings in Canada to have its own postal code prefix, H5A.

History Place Bonaventure was first conceived as an exhibition hall, international trade centre, and hotel. The building covers an area of 2 ha (4.9 acres) and is built over 18 CNR tracks leading to Central Station. Construction began in 1964 and was completed in 1967. Designed in the Brutalist style, the exterior walls are poured-in-place, ribbed sand-blasted concrete, with the interior walls sand-blasted concrete or brick. Concordia Hall was a 23,000 m2 (250,000 sq ft) exhibition hall. The first trade show was hosted in 1966, while the upper floors were still being constructed. Adjacent to this vast space are two large mezzanines. In 2020, it was announced that the exhibition hall would close (due to larger spaces available today, like the nearby Palais des congrès de Montréal [Montreal Convention Center]). When Place Bonaventure opened, there were five floors of wholesale suppliers above Concordia Hall, featuring fashions, home furnishings, and children's toys. An additional floor contained the offices of the principal trading nations of the world. At ground level there were two floors of retail shopping mall. All these uses disappeared over the years. In 1998 Place Bonaventure was renovated at an expense of CAD$60 million. The building was redesigned to offer large, continuous office space. Retail space was significantly reduced. Windows were added to all four sides, on all floors, to allow light into the new office spaces. The building takes its name from Bonaventure Station, a former railway station located nearby. A planned expansion to the south was never constructed. Today, Place Bonaventure is owned by PSP Investments and Kevric Real Estate Corporation.

Tenants

The complex houses a 397-room rooftop hotel, Hotel Bonaventure Montreal (formerly a Westin then a Hilton Hotel), featuring a year-round heated rooftop outdoor pool, a 2.5-acre rooftop garden with trees, flowers and waterfalls, a jacuzzi, and a dry sauna. The hotel's meeting space, fully renovated in 2018, totals 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m2) and boasts Montreal's largest ballroom without obstructions (15,000 sq ft (1,400 m2)), as well as 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2) of exhibition space. Other major tenants include the Société de transport de Montréal (headquarters), Fido, Cogeco radio stations, BMO Financial Group, and a few federal government departments.

Access Place Bonaventure is connected to Montreal's underground city. It is also linked to the Bonaventure Metro station, exo commuter train stations (Lucien-L'Allier and Central Station), the ARTM's downtown bus terminus, and intercity train service (Via and Amtrak, at Central Station).

References

Sources Ede, Carol (1971). Canadian Architecture 1960/70. Toronto: Burns and MacEachern. p. 264. ISBN 0-88768-021-6.

External links

Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Place Bonaventure

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Place Bonaventure claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Place Bonaventure before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Place Bonaventure ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Place Bonaventure

In research: Place Bonaventure appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Place Bonaventure in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Place Bonaventure is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1967 establishments in Quebec, Arcop buildings, Brutalist architecture in Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Place Bonaventure outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Place Bonaventure in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Place Bonaventure means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Place Bonaventure out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Place Bonaventure in simple terms?

Why does Place Bonaventure matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Place Bonaventure?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Place Bonaventure.