Art & Architecture

As this station’s shape was tightly constrained by obstacles including a major underground aqueduct and a ventilation shaft from the Mount Royal railway tunnel, as well as planning for a possible future intermodal station on that tunnel, the architect chose to unite its disparate elements with a consistent and remarkable colour scheme featuring varying shades of pink, giving the station a dreamlike, ethereal quality.

Inspired by the station’s planned name, commemorating the French composer Vincent d’Indy, and by the proximity of the Université de Montréal faculty of music and the Salle Claude-Champagne concert hall, the colours suggest the emotions inspired by music. In a similar cultural vein, the banding on the walls and the diamond-shaped patterns on the floor (each level of the station has its own similar but distinctive pattern) are references to Renaissance styles, such as the polychromed façade and pavement of the Duomo of Florence.¹ The hemispherical light fixtures on the walls over the stairwells are an additional fanciful touch.

The station’s most recognizable elements are its unforgettable platform benches of moulded concrete, designed with high curving backs and painted a shocking pink. Continuing the post-modernist take on the Renaissance theme, the curved backpieces suggest the form of baldachins; they also provide a forced perspective effect that makes the trainroom vault appear higher.¹ Unfortunately, these benches’ design owes more to considerations of style than comfort, as they do not seem to be planned for either the average back or the average backside.

The trainroom, built in tunnel, is connected by a narrow transept and a deep, broad stairwell to the ticket hall, just below street level.

The low-ceilinged ticket hall extends lengthwise to connect to the station’s entrances. The multiple structural constraints imposed an irregular, fluid shape for this space,² in serendipitous continuity with the touch of fantasy in the station’s decor. The same shades of pink are used on the walls and floors, although the walls use more gradients than stripes. The space’s pillars, with their distinctive wide circular capitals, actually support the roadway overhead. The ceiling is patterned with circular coffers and the same hemispherical lamps as downstairs.

A hallway at the western end of the ticket hall, overlooking the deep volume of the stairwell, leads to the main entrance. Built below the main hall of the CEPSUM sports complex, this entrance also offers an underground city link into the complex.

This entrance was considerably expanded to host the top of one of the metro station’s two elevator shafts, completed in 2026. The main shaft connects the entrance, ticket hall level, crossover, and Saint-Michel platform, and is equipped with separate gatelines at street and ticket hall levels. This elevator is accompanied by a surprisingly large, additional stairwell directly down to the platform level. (Unusually, the stairwell, unlike the elevator, skips the ticket hall level, as it descends from inside the separate gateline at street level.)

The stairwell is built within a ventilation shaft, whose presence is recalled by a section of its original, unique curved grille bars at the transept level. The stairwell and elevator shaft, and its smaller counterpart between the crossover and the Snowdon platform, are lined in sections of glazed tiles in brilliant scarlet or black, scarlet panels, smooth exposed concrete, dark flooring, and at platform level, sections of wall that follow the original striped pattern but in shades of grey.

Across the street from the main entrance, a headhouse at the corner of Boulevard Édouard-Montpetit and Avenue Vincent-D’Indy has an unusual spindle shape that follows the curves of the road. It is built in steel, glass, and concrete with hot pink details and moulded concrete decoration. The nearly entirely glazed building opens directly onto the ticket hall, admitting sunlight into the space.

In 2025, the metro station was connected to the REM line running through the Mount Royal Tunnel. In an engineering feat, a shaft was dug 72 metres down to the century-old tunnel and platforms excavated along it, creating Canada’s deepest rail station and North America’s second-deepest.

The new REM station took the place of the former Marie-Victorin exit on the east end of the metro station concourse. The original headhouse was demolished in 2018 and replaced with a new headhouse in the characteristic REM style: a fully glazed rectangular box with white vertical stripes to filter the sun. The split-level headhouse exits onto the street at its south end; a lower-level exit on the east side gives access to the Université de Montréal’s Marie-Victorin building.

One storey below, but still within the headhouse volume, is the elevator lobby, hosting the heads of the five high-speed elevators that plunge twenty storeys down to connect with the REM station’s ticket hall. This upper elevator lobby also contains the link to the metro concourse, via a hallway that preserves some of the station’s original concrete ceiling with its characteristic circular coffers.

Inside each elevator car, animated LED lighting strips track the elevators’ descent or ascent. The feet of the elevators have doors on both sides, opening into a U-shaped lower lobby where passengers going down can exit out the back before passengers going up get on in the front – although for some reason this feature is not automatically activated at this time. Also, the five elevators available are proving inadequate at times to handle the station’s passenger volumes, particularly during the university term.³

The lower elevator lobby leads to the ticket hall, and then to a crossover hall, from which a staircase, an upward escalator, and an elevator lead to each of the two platforms.

The REM station’s decor is completely separate from that of the metro station, and is quite plain. Most of the station is clad in white enamelled metal panels whose varying widths create a certain aesthetic rhythm. The panels are horizontal on the platforms and vertical elsewhere. The station is part of the “urban/mixed” stylistic section of the REM, based around the colour red;⁴ certain areas on the crossover level and in the headhouse are accented by walls in patterns of matte and glossy red tiles that suggest the brickwork used in the area.⁵ Elements such as the rectangular station box, pale grey tile floors, platform screen doors, and continuous light fixtures with linear LED elements are shared with other stations.

However, two features of this station’s decor stand out. First, in various locations in the platform and crossover levels, wide, full-height spaces feature exposed sections of the surrounding rock, dramatically lit and artistically “framed” with a darker surround. These striking segments both emphasize the station’s great depth and engineering prowess, and recall the similar, though smaller, features on the blue line’s two other transfer stations, Snowdon and Jean-Talon.

These showcases are echoed in a way by five large, full-height mosaics along the crossover. These brilliantly coloured abstract works by Manuel Mathieu, entitled Le Mont habité, were inspired by microscopic details that the artist observed in samples of the surrounding volcanic rock. The lively mosaics are a welcome element of colour and life in the depths of the station.