Monastère des Augustines Museum

We were entrusted with the commission of creating a museum within a heritage setting while preserving the site’s authentic character and ensuring that the simple and deliberately frugal architecture is allowed space to breathe. Working with the set of parameters transmitted by a religious community whose noble purpose of nursing and healing the sick has received a considerable amount of praise, BISSON + CASTONGUAY temporarily appropriated the space to create an atmosphere of encounter with the Augustinian Sisters and their centuries-old mission.

In a concern for safeguarding the spirit of the place and to highlight the sheer untouched beauty of these historic spaces, we opted for a common thread in the form of a sober, luminescent display which creates a continuous sequence from one room to the next without it ever being irreversibly anchored. Floating one meter from the floor, the small corridor showcases, with a light touch, a distinctive collection of objects belonging to this religious community, some of them commonplace and others precious. The absolute beauty of the architecture can thus be more strongly felt, and the winding pathway of floating objects bears witness to a past defined by its both altruistic and laborious nature and testifies to the community’s sacred mission.