Le Within is hardly typical student accommodation. There’s not a cast-off sofa or faded bulletin board to be found. Instead, imagine a cross between a heritage apartment building with a boutique hostel, and voilà. The vision for a series of stylish communal and private spaces that reimagine student living reveals itself.

The 25,000-square-foot building is ideally located in Montreal’s Shaughnessy Village, near McGill and Concordia universities and a short hop from Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal. The building’s owners, Canora Private Property Management, came up with the concept of a living artwork: a place where the city’s ever-evolving community of students could find inspiration in well-designed rooms and objects.

To execute this new concept, Canora called on Montreal’s Sid Lee Architecture, helmed by Jean Pelland and Martin Leblanc. “By revitalizing a historical building, we aimed to offer students a truly unique living experience where architecture and design, rooted in built heritage, are at the service of their wellbeing,” says Pelland, architect and principal partner at Sid Lee.

Together, the team decided that the narrative behind the design would be composed of four key pillars: duality, modularity, urbanity, and immersion. The feeling of immersion starts in the communal spaces, which were designed to encourage both introspection and community. Inspired by Montreal’s architecture and food scene, the Sid Lee team incorporated splashes of red (an homage to the brick buildings), grey for the paved streets, and in the shared kitchen, cream and salmon tones to reference the toppings on an iconic Montreal bagel. Upstairs, grass-green paint defines the hallways and doors.

In the rooms, flexibility reigns: a table with wheels can be moved to function as place to eat or study; open shelves can be adjusted; modular seating can be rearranged as a long sofa or series of chairs. While the furnishings are spare, they are perfectly scaled to the space and clean in their silhouettes, creating the impression of an airy retreat with European flair.

From the neon signs in the lobby to the unexpected red grout in the backsplash of the individual units, Le Within brings Montreal’s energy indoors through the power of design—and allows the students to feed mind, body, and soul with the one-of-a-kind vibe.

Photographs by Alex Lesage.

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