Montreal Thinks Big.

Compared with dowdy London in the 1960s or decaying New York, Montreal provided a vision of urban reconstruction inspired largely by CIAM principles. Currently showing at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, The '60s: Montreal Thinks Big argues that the central planning of highways, housing, parks and a new metro system brought architecture and engineering together in a way that clearly recalls La Ville Radieuse. Many ideas had their roots in the radical teaching of visionaries such as Peter Collins in the architecture and planning school at McGill University. And the often provocative agendas of students such as Moshe Safdie and practice professors such as John Bland found their way into Expo '67 and its aftermath. Accompanied by a book of the same name edited by the exhibition curator Andre Lortie, the exhibition presents fresh interpretations of this perhaps most difficult decade of twentieth-century architecture in North America.

The resolution of the tension between private gain and public investment

is the first of six themes explored. Here, partnership was the order of the day generated by the sense that if private developers worked with the metropolitan authority, then benefits would flow to all stakeholders, especially the rising middle classes drawn to Montreal by expanding financial and educational institutions. From small beginnings the city expanded upwards and outwards. Big projects (second theme) were the result, such as Place Bonaventure designed by Ray Affleck and his team, whose massive scale and ambitious network of underground malls helped make Montreal one of the great metropolises of the Western world. Bigger projects were to follow, drawing in international talent such as Mies (at Westmont Square) and Nervi (at the Montreal Stock Exchange). The exhibition charts these projects from early sketch designs to development models and photographs of the final buildings. What is refreshing is the presence of so many drawings and models which show the process of designing and anticipating urban change; drawings which are pre-CAD and hence revealing in their graphic honesty.

The third theme explores the concept of standardisation. Prefabrication allows the ideas of Safdie and Habitat '67 to enter into larger narratives. Here student projects--not least a wonderful ink and tracing paper drawing by Peter Cook (from his Archigram days) of a tower complex design for the Montreal Expo bring a challenging edge to some of the corporate landscapes on show. Montreal was seen as a laboratory where ideas were to be tested and ultimately built.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Unusually, the exhibition also celebrates the making of urban highways. Architects were extensively involved in the design of the new freeways which criss-crossed downtown Montreal. Perspectives show these strivings for the ultimate urban freeway, which both characterised (and condemned) the age. Now such structures stand spalling, their serpentine lines spoiled by graffiti, but in their day they were objects worthy of the attention of Montreal's young architects.

In tandem with the building of urban freeways there was a huge investment in the construction of the Montreal subway. With a scale at times not unlike the Moscow metro, new stations were integrated with massive developments above ground and a network of shopping malls below. Stations tended to be designed by the architects who left their mark above ground, giving a coherence not evident in most metro systems. The exhibition shows how the system of subterranean malls was planned using a coalition of public and private agencies.

The final theme is Expo '67, which is explored here with the attention to detail characteristic of cultural historians. The collection of Expo memorabilia among models, drawings and photographs of the last of the great World's Fairs recalls the optimism of Montreal in the '60s. There are views of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, Frei Otto's tents and Basil Spence's fortress-like pavilion taken from the monorail which transported people around the Expo island site. This was society in motion, a vision of art and technology to which the whole of Montreal aspired.

Compared with the majority of North American cities, Montreal has much to teach Europe. The exhibition ends on the theme of 'Learning from Montreal' which can be seen as a riposte perhaps to Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas. If evidence is needed that Canada and the USA have quite different urban cultures in spite of superficial similarities, this exhibition provides both the material and the arguments. The '60s may be discredited today, but much social and economic capital was laid down in this heady decade.

At the Canadian Centre for Architecture until 11 September

www.cia.qc.ca