[3][4] Claude Provencher and Michel Roy met in 1974 while working at Papineau Gérin-Lajoie Le Blanc, a Montréal-based architecture firm.

[14] According to the firm, its site-specific approach involves the exploration and analysis of a project’s context: specifically, the physical, cultural, geographical, historical and economic constraints of a site.

[15] Since its acquisition of Beauchamp Bourbeau, Provencher_Roy has increasingly focused on designing according to radical reuse: leveraging advances in 3D modeling, cloud-point scanning and sustainable environmental technologies to repurpose existing structures.

[15] The ethos of structural adaptation has informed the redevelopment of a Canadian Pacific Railway industrial complex in Montréal into a mixed-use, environmentally sustainable district;[16] an under-used port in Québec into a public coastal park and cruise terminal fueled by shore power;[17] the concrete Tour de Montréal into a glazed office building for the Desjardins Group;[18] and the underground expansion and renovation of the Québec National Assembly to modernize its energy infrastructure and improve its accessibility while preserving its aesthetic and material heritage.

[19] Much like their recent transformation of downtown Montréal into a pedestrian-friendly “cohesive urban landscape”,[20] each project has used the brief of redevelopment as an opportunity to stitch spatially disparate neighborhoods together, attract pedestrian circulation and increase the amount of on-site vegetation.