McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Person
Desnoyers, Maurice
1927-
Maurice Desnoyers was born in 1927 in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec.
He graduated from McGill University School of Architecture in 1954 and began a solo practice. In 1957, he joined André J. Mercure to form a firm Desnoyers Mercure & associés. The agency developed a remarkable expertise in the field of architectural heritage with the objective of meeting current needs while highlighting the past. In collaboration with Gagnon and Sheppard architectes, they renovated the Prince-Arthur Gardens in 1973, which earned them the Massey Medal in 1975. They converted warehouses of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph into condominiums "Les Cours Le Royer"; the former Shawinigan aluminum smelter into a contemporary art center, and they restored and modernized the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. They collaborated on numerous projects with other architects, e.g. in 1988, with Moshe Safdie, they designed the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City and the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1991. In 2005, they collaborated with the firm Saïa Barbarese Topouzanov architects and Menkès Shooner Dagenais architects to create the Lassonde pavilions of the École Polytechnique. Desnoyers and Mercure both retired in 2010.
In 2020, he received the Medal of Merit from Ordre des architectes du Québec.