Sherbrooke's Le Grand-Espace Wins Two DNA Paris Design Awards

Le Grand-Espace, a 1,370-square-metre performance venue in downtown Sherbrooke, Canada, has won two DNA Paris Design Awards since opening in 2025, taking prizes in the Architecture — Cultural Architecture and Interior Design — Civic Buildings categories. Atelier Paul Laurendeau designed the building in consortium with NEUF architectes after winning the commission through an architectural competition in 2020.

The venue programs theatre, dance, circus arts and productions for young audiences, strengthening the cultural offer of Quebec's Eastern Townships tourist region. It anchors the Wellington South Sector Intervention Program, which the architects identify as one of the principal drivers of the district's social, cultural and economic development.

"With Le Grand-Espace, we are inaugurating much more than a building: we are making a strong commitment to culture, to our youth and to the vitality of the downtown core," Sherbrooke Mayor Évelyne Beaudin said in a statement. "Sherbrooke now has a unique gathering place where art can flourish in step with our community."

The building connects directly to the existing Centre des arts de la scène Jean-Besré (CASJB). Its main façade opens onto a shared forecourt through a tinted curtain wall, using transparency and coloured glazing to draw the foyer into dialogue with public space. The side and rear façades are clad in painted aluminum panels carrying a monumental photographic artwork by Estrie artist Bertrand Carrière, which depicts a scene between sky and sea and lights up at dusk.

At the core of the plan sits a black-box hall equipped with motorized seating tiers and retractable technical grids. These allow proscenium, theatre-in-the-round and more intimate configurations, giving companies latitude to test different staging approaches and performer-audience relationships.

The venue operates as part of a production ecosystem where creation, rehearsal and presentation coexist. The program includes administrative offices, a green room with three adjacent dressing rooms, a loading area and storage. A peripheral corridor circulates the public, performers and technical staff while linking the foyer, green room, dressing rooms and loading dock. Sound-absorbing black rock-fibre acoustic panels sit at high level to isolate the hall from exterior noise and control reverberation in the vestibule.

Interior design and wayfinding, developed as an integral part of the architecture, draw on the world of theatre through a palette dominated by red, black and gold. The double-height foyer receives natural light filtered through coloured glazing, shifting the atmosphere of the space throughout the day. A black velvet curtain can enclose the area to form an intimate stage for small-scale performances aimed at very young audiences, supported by removable wooden bleachers.

Demand has already outpaced expectations. According to the architects, the venue's programming has tripled since opening, placing Sherbrooke on the national touring circuit for producers alongside venues in Quebec City and Montreal — a rapid consolidation of the city's position in Canadian performing-arts infrastructure.