The Montréal Research Group

The Montréal Research Group at the Canadian Centre for Architecture is undertaking a systematic social history of the built environment in Montréal, from the town's founding in 1642 through to the early years of the 19th century. This investigation of the social and economic processes that affected urban development and morphology is designed to provide fresh insights into the formation of a colonial town.

Since 1992, the focus of our work has been the development, in collaboration with the Centre for Landscape Research at the University of Toronto, of a computerized system that assembles the rich details of day-to- day activities recorded in extensive archival series to explore and analyze the transformation of the built environment. The unique interface that has resulted - CICERONE - combines textual and cartographic databases with a dynamic visualization tool for representing historical information in either two or three dimensions.

Essentially, we have used computerized reconstitutions as a means to synthesize and make accessible millions of pieces of information collated from notarial deeds, vital statistics, judicial records, and seigneurial and colonial documents. Once each piece of information is anchored in time and space, it becomes an integral part of a plan or virtual model (for example, a lot dimension or a building height), or is simply tied to a given physical feature (for example, a lot owner's name and occupation). By visually organizing a complex mass of information for any given date in the study period, the reconstitutions become the starting point for analyzing the patterns and processes of change over time.

The first phase of this project will be completed by September 1996 with the completion of data entry for the 17th century and the refinement of the CICERONE interface.

Montréal Research Group
Alan Stewart, historian and co-ordinator
Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne, historical researcher
Mario Lalancette, historian and out-reach programs
Russ Mitchell, GIS specialist
Léon Robichaud, historian, PC-platform development and web publication
Jennifer Waywell, historian and UNIX-platform development

Centre for Landscape Research, University of Toronto
John Danahy, director
Rodney Hoinkes, head of design applications