The Montreal Gazette

Henry Cobb, the New York-based architect responsible for the concept and overall design of Place Ville Marie, says he is appalled by damage done to the complex. The "suburbanization of the plaza" by installing grass and skylights there "is a tragedy," Cobb, PVM's main conceptual architect as part of I.M. Pei & Partners, said Wednesday in an interview from his Manhattan office. Equally damaging was the addition of four floors to the building at Mansfield St. and Rene Levesque Blvd., which destroyed its relationship in terms of mass and material to the ensemble. "I now have the unenviable task of taking a building that basically has been ruined and making the best of it," he said of the planned glass curtain wall.