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Published by FRAME, Opposites Attract: ACDF au fil des contrastes is not your typical architectural monograph. Blending essay, documentary, and journalistic investigation, the book takes the form of a series of candid, personal conversations between Maxime Frappier, co-founder of ACDF, and Quebec editor François-Luc Giraldeau. This conversational format gives the book a lively and accessible tone while offering an in-depth exploration of what defines one of the most distinctive firms on the contemporary Canadian architectural scene.
The narrative traces pivotal moments, turning points, stances, hesitations, strokes of luck, mentorships, and landmark projects that have emerged from the fertile chaos of ACDF's deeply collective creative process. While the narrative is anchored in a singular voice, it never seeks to dominate. Instead, it acts as a guiding thread that reveals the inner workings of a studio rooted in teamwork, cross-disciplinarity, and deep contextual awareness.
Page by page, the reader discovers a studio firmly rooted in Montreal, yet with a practice that extends far beyond its borders—an office that balances professional rigor with creative flexibility, and structure with spontaneity. The book highlights an architectural stance grounded in reality, where constraints—whether financial, technical, or contextual—serve as catalysts for creativity and innovation. As the title suggests, it is within contrast that the firm finds its energy, and where its architecture achieves its most authentic expression: black and white, rough and polished, intuition and method, local grounding and global outlook.
Amid today’s environmental, economic, and social challenges, ACDF offers a thoughtful and purposeful architectural response—one that enriches collective life through responsible resource use and innovative building methods, while ensuring that meaning, efficiency, and beauty remain inseparable.
Each project becomes an opportunity to do more with less—to turn constraints into creative leverage and offer solutions that are restrained, yet powerful. This intentional frugality—often born of tight budgets, but driven by a cultural sensitivity rooted in local history—has become a defining hallmark of the studio.
In a testimonial included in the book, partners Étienne Laplante Courchesne, Maxime Frappier, and Joan Renaud reaffirm the studio’s deep commitment:
“We are profoundly driven by a mission: to showcase the creative talent of Quebec architects beyond our borders. In a province where means are often limited, ideas are not. We are part of a tradition of resilience and inventiveness shaped by our relatively recent history. Our ancestors built this society with their own hands—clearing land, raising villages, cities, schools, and hospitals. This living memory inspires us every day to design enduring architecture—an architecture that listens to the land, to the community, and to the energy and resources it requires to come into being.”
This dual perspective—anchored in both past and future—nourishes a practice that is sensitive, historically aware, and forward-looking in its pursuit of innovation and sustainability.
Ultimately, Opposites Attract: ACDF au fil des contrastes is not simply a book about ACDF. It’s an invitation to see architecture differently—not as a succession of finished objects, but as a living process shaped by fertile contradictions. It is a process in which the architect is never alone. Every project is born of collective effort, a weave of expertise, dialogue, and iteration. Every journey is shaped by encounters, mentors, collaborations—but also by missteps, detours, and missed opportunities. This book is also a meditation on the urgent need to build with clarity and conscience in a world of limited resources, where architecture must, more than ever, be defined by relevance, purpose… and humanity.
Title: Opposites Attract: ACDF au fil des contrastes
Author: François-Luc Giraldeau
Managing editor: Marlous van Rossum
Design: Barbara Iwanicka
Publisher: FRAME Publishers
Genre: Architecture
Language: English
Size: 230 x 300 mm
Format: 272 pages / hardcover / full colour
About ACDF Architecture
With a portfolio of ambitious and design-savvy commercial, residential, hospitality, interior, and master planning projects, ACDF is recognized as one of Canada’s most forward-thinking architecture firms. Under the direction of Maxime-Alexis Frappier, Joan Renaud, and Etienne Laplante Courchesne, the firm’s harmonious designs of large-scale projects have received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of their progressive approach to a new generation of meaningful and impactful buildings.
ACDF is built upon a foundation of pragmatism and creativity, embracing the belief that every building should serve its inhabitants and passersby. Beyond the status of grand gestures and iconic appearances, the firm believes that buildings should be experiences infused with emotive and democratic architecture that touches and benefits all who come in contact with it. That process begins with practical solutions and creative designs that foster harmonious architecture, ensuring that every finished structure projects a sense of meaning and mission.
Based in Montreal, Quebec, ACDF draws inspiration from a city known for its liveability and vitality, and which straddles the divide between Europe and North America, and between the historic and the modern. Energized by challenges and constraints, ACDF explores and evaluates each project’s limitations in order to inject it with fresh ideas and innovative solutions that exceed expectations and imaginations.
About FRAME Publishers
Established in 1997 and headquartered in Amsterdam, FRAME is a global platform for all professional members of and stakeholders in the design industry. We're dedicated to exploring what's next in spatial design and are always on the lookout for what's happening on the cusp of innovation and creativity. By way of speaking with newcomers about their fresh visions to learning from seasoned experts and examining business insights that will shape future design practices, we aim to provide our community with a comprehensive perspective on spatial design at large.
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