Art & Architecture

This station, which serves as the green line’s eastern terminus and accordingly as an important terminal for numerous bus lines, combines the efficiency it needs with elegant modern design.

Rather than being tunnelled directly under Rue Sherbrooke, the station was entirely built in open cut alongside the roadway, providing ample space. The row of three entrances arrayed along Rue Honoré-Beaugrand converge into a broad concourse, lit by a large skylight. The concourse leads to the ticket hall, also very spacious with a gateline along its full width. The wide hallways and ticket hall allow efficient passenger flow, to accommodate surge loads from both the trains and the many bus lines that terminate and unload here.

The ticket hall overlooks the platforms through a full-height glass wall. The volume over the tracks just beyond this wall is lit by a second skylight.

The broad staircases from the ticket hall to the platforms are framed with monolithic concrete walls with a distinctive Y shape, and are backed by ceramic murals by Jean-Paul Mousseau. These two murals are “negatives” of each other, with the same abstract design in blue on a red background to the north, and red on a blue background to the south.

The trainroom expands outwards towards the staircases to facilitate passenger flow, as the ceilings rise and fall to balance the length of the platforms. The spaces are also punctuated by the floor cladding, with squares of red-brown stoneware tiles framed by pale grey granite.

The walls of the platforms and the concourse level are finished with a unique concrete frieze, cast on site, whose slash-like forms express the dynamism of the transit system. On the platforms, lamps hidden behind the nameplates produce dramatic patterns of light and shade on these walls.

The two main headhouses are elongated structures, each encircled by a bus loop. Their square-coffered concrete roofs have broad overhangs supported by triangular corbels extending out from the supporting pillars. The heaviness of the roofs is balanced by the spare, open spaces and abundant natural lighting from the almost entirely glazed curtain walls.

The Sherbrooke Sud headhouse has been extended westward to provide an additional waiting area, accessible through a hallway running south of the stairwell.

A third headhouse, a minuscule building barely more than a covered staircase, stands on the north side of Rue Sherbrooke.

The two light shafts are topped with stand-alone lanterns that, unusually, are just as tall and as visually prominent as the headhouses, whose style they share. A similarly imposing ventilation shaft forms a small square with one of the lanterns and the Sherbrooke Nord headhouse; it echoes the monolithic Y-shape of the platform staircases.