Press release from Åvontuura :
« A hand-illustrated map of more than 60 buildings, from Saint Joseph’s Oratory to Habitat 67
TORONTO, 13 October, 2026 — Åvontuura, the Canadian publisher behind a growing series of illustrated architectural city guides, has released its Architecture Guide to Montreal. The guide was published earlier this week and joins the studio’s Toronto and Vancouver editions.
The guide brings more than 60 of the city’s most significant buildings together on a single hand-illustrated map. The selection covers several distinct periods in Montreal’s architectural history and includes the optimism of Expo 67, seen in Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 and R. Buckminster Fuller’s Biosphère. It traces the modernist reshaping of downtown, beginning with I.M. Pei’s Place Ville Marie. It also includes major religious and civic landmarks such as the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal, Saint Joseph’s Oratory and the Grande Bibliothèque.
Contemporary work by Montreal practices also feature prominently, including projects by Saucier + Perrotte, Provencher_Roy and Lemay. Together they show a city that continues to produce some of the most inspiring architecture in North America.
Curated routes link the buildings into walks that can be done in a morning or across several days. A QR-linked digital pin map adds building descriptions and directions to Google Maps for use on the ground. The guide folds to pocket size and is designed equally for architects, students, design-minded visitors and Montrealers rediscovering their own city.
Montreal has one of the richest architectural stories of any city in North America, and much of it is still remarkably intact. Expo 67 gave the city a sense of ambition that you can still feel today, both in the landmarks of that era and in the work local firms are doing now. With this guide, we wanted to make that story easy to follow.
Karl van Es founded Åvontuura after 18 years as a practising architect. The studio started from a simple observation: there were few good resources for travellers who want to experience a city through its buildings. Every Åvontuura guide is researched, curated and illustrated with that architectural perspective.
The Architecture Guide to Montreal is available now at avontuura.com and through it’s stockists, listed on its website. It will also be available at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) bookstore in Montreal from late October.
About Åvontuura
Åvontuura produces hand-illustrated architectural city guides in a folded brochure map format, covering cities across North America, Europe and Asia. Founded in Toronto by architect Karl van Es, the studio’s guides are curated for people who travel to see buildings. »
Montreal Guide
