Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion: Architecture That Teaches
Jul 28
5 min read
In the suburb of Rosemère, just north of Montreal, a school is reconsidering what a sports pavilion can be. Long before students step onto a court or lace up for practice, the building itself starts teaching — through colour, texture, and the shape of a room. At Externat Sacré-Cœur's new 4,675-square-metre pavilion, learning does not wait for a classroom door to open.
The project, led by Montreal studio Taktik in collaboration with Atelier Bouré Therrien architectes, spans three levels and refuses to be defined by athletics alone. Its entrance hall, circulation zones, multipurpose room, art classrooms, and rooftop terrace are treated less like functional stops and more like scenes in a shared story — one designed to move, gather, and grow with the students who inhabit it.
The journey begins the moment students step through the door. A sweeping illustration by artist Lucas Saenger greets them in the sunlit entrance hall, spelling out the school's motto, "Towards the Summits," across the wall like a landscape waiting to be explored. One floor up, a second wave of murals wraps the multipurpose room and art classrooms in a more immersive, painterly world.
For Noémie Giroux-Carpentier, environmental designer at Taktik, the murals were never meant to sit quietly in the background. Rather than nodding to the area's urbanization, the artwork looks back at Rosemère's rural past, when open fields still surrounded the school grounds. Some of that imagery escapes the wall entirely, spilling into foam sculptures and a beloved oversized yellow groundhog that blur where the picture ends and the room begins. As Giroux-Carpentier puts it, the students themselves become part of the scene.
Each classroom carries its own visual signature, too. Loose, expressive brushstrokes announce the traditional arts room, while a pixelated pattern marks the entrance to its digital counterpart. The graphics do more than decorate: they help students navigate the building, sense a space's purpose before crossing its threshold, and subtly feel that they belong there.
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Nothing in the pavilion sits still for long. Every piece of furniture — designed and built to order by Taktik — was conceived to shift, fold, or reconfigure alongside the rhythm of a school day. In the reception area, a lounge-like seating zone doubles as a waiting room or an overflow classroom without missing a beat.
On the first floor, transition spaces are outfitted with furniture that invites students to linger and talk between classes, rather than pass through. Upstairs, in the multipurpose room, a substantial solid-ash table anchors group projects by day and flips into a ping-pong table when the mood calls for it. The art rooms rely on built-in storage to keep surfaces clear, giving teachers room to rearrange islands, mobile tables, and seating however a lesson demands.
Solid wood and softly organic forms run through every piece, lending the whole project a warmth that feels closer to a workshop than an institutional supply catalogue. The furniture, in other words, is not simply furnishing the school — it is teaching too, showing students that a room can adapt to what they need from it, rather than the other way around.
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Beyond the murals and the furniture, the pavilion leans into biophilic design — the practice of weaving natural elements into built spaces to support wellbeing. Generous daylight throughout the common areas makes room for a steady presence of plant life, echoing the rural landscapes painted just a few metres away and reinforcing a quiet calm throughout the building.
Play, too, has a permanent seat at the table. Foam sculptures modelled after the bushes in the murals can be dragged, stacked, and rearranged by students on a whim, turning static hallways into open-ended stage sets. The yellow groundhog, already something of an unofficial mascot, invites students to sit, gather, and claim a corner of the building as their own.
That same spirit of adaptability carries up to the roof. What was originally planned as a simple covering became something far more ambitious once Taktik made its case to the client. "Initially, this roof was just a simple covering, but we convinced the client to transform it into a rooftop terrace," Giroux-Carpentier recalls, describing how the space evolved to include planting containers and direct outdoor access from the art classrooms.
Now complete with perennial gardens, an integrated irrigation system, and four Japanese maple trees set to mature alongside generations of students, the terrace has become more than an outdoor amenity. It also served as a testing ground for an entirely new line of urban furniture from Taktik, crafted in stainless steel, galvanized steel, and Douglas fir — pieces flexible enough to eventually find homes well beyond Rosemère.
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur's new pavilion makes a quiet but persuasive argument: that a school can educate through its walls, its furniture, and even its rooftop, long before a lesson plan enters the room. Every mural, mobile table, and potted plant was placed with the same question in mind — how does a space encourage a young person to move, gather, and make it their own?
As the groundhog settles into its role as an unofficial mascot and the maple trees begin their slow climb toward the rooftop sky, the pavilion is set to keep evolving right alongside the students who fill it — proof that good design, much like good teaching, is never really finished.
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Externat Sacré-Cœur’s Pavilion. Photography by Maxime Brouillet
Technical sheet
Project's official name: Externat Sacré-Cœur - Pavillon sportif
Area: 50,321 sq. ft.
Architects: Atelier Bouré Therrien architectes inc.
Founded in 2005 in Montreal's Villeray neighbourhood, Taktik Design is a design studio specializing in creating distinctive, innovative environments. The company is driven by a desire to challenge conventions and believes an innovative approach is essential for creating unique and memorable experiences.
Known for being approachable and highly attentive to clients' needs, the creative and passionate team at Taktik constantly innovates to optimize space use. Understanding a space and its functionalities is at the core of their conceptual approach.
For Taktik, a successful space cannot be summed up by its aesthetics alone, but rather by its ability to create a meaningful link between its users and the environment it creates. Their work is guided by four core values: authenticity, engagement, insight, and innovation.
