To complete the integration of pavilion with its surroundings, the architects linked it to the museum’s other pavilions, both physically and metaphorically. First, the basement entrance is connected to the museum’s underground network through a corridor underneath Sherbrooke Street and connects to the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion. This 45-metre passageway becomes a space for introduction to the new pavilion as it contains monumental works by Quebec artists, such as Riopelle’s Ice Canoe. Aside from this physical link, the Bourgie Pavilion is symbolically integrated with the museum complex through a reinterpretation of the white marble used for the façades of the 1912 Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion and the 1991 Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion.
The architects clad the new pavilion with a wall of marble from the same Vermont quarry as that of its two predecessors, reproducing the image of the material in its original state, with the design of veins running along the façade. “We wanted to give the feeling that the galleries had been sculpted from a gigantic four-storey-high block of marble,” recalls Matthieu Geoffrion, project manager for the Bourgie Pavilion.