Art & Architecture

This very exciting station is characterized by dramatic, futuristic rounded shapes, almost entirely in exposed concrete. The central volume, built cut-and-cover, is a single, towering, unified space, tapered in form with inward-slanting walls and rounded-off corners, both suggesting the streamlined forms of the trains and expressing the architects’ notion of the station as a “swelling in the tunnel.”¹

One of its most unique and remarkable features is the single vertical circulation axis. To reduce costs by avoiding the need to excavate two stairwells,¹ the architects decided to connect the crossover to the ticket hall via a single, soaring flight of escalators, rising through the centre of the lofty main volume.

At ticket hall level, as passengers move from the gatelines toward the escalators, the whole volume below is gradually revealed to them; Gérard Gascon, director of the Bureau du transport métropolitain, likened the effect to “entering a church by the choir loft.”² As they descend the escalators, the sweeping lines of the crossover parapet, walls, and trainroom vault merge to create a rounded window onto the platforms. A combination of hanging and recessed light fixtures cast shadows onto the high ceilings, adding to the effect.

After spilling down from the ticket hall through the main volume, the central escalator flight spreads out to form the crossover. From there, two staircases land heavily at the centre of each platform, ending in massive concrete feet that enclose oval recesses beneath the crossover. The effect is at once fluid and monumental.

The eastern end of the platform (that is, at the head of Honoré-Beaugrand trains) is particularly beautiful. Whereas the western end is in tunnel, the eastern end is entirely within the volume built cut-and-cover. The rounded form of the volume is most clearly visible here, tapering towards the end of the platform. This end of the platform is also directly under the unsupported escalators, which soar up above to the ticket hall level. The effect of these architectural forms is nothing short of stunning.

The bright red benches along the platforms add some colour, while their forms complement the beauty of the rest of the architecture. The floor tiling, in pale blue-grey circular tiles, continues a short distance up the walls, which merge smoothly into the floors. Stainless steel railings run along much of the length of the platform walls and along the parapets of the crossover.

Although less spacious, the ticket hall and the corridors to the exits continue the architectural theme, with curved, inward-slanted walls with stainless steel railings and recessed lighting along their entire length. The two corridors leading to the headhouses extend at 45-degree angles from the axis of the station; they converge at the ticket hall in a funnel shape, directing passengers physically and visually toward the head of the escalators.

The three headhouses are also striking structures, with glass curtain walls hung from concrete roofs supported on angled, outboard columns. The entrance that serves as a metropolitan bus terminus has been enlarged—not entirely happily—by the addition of an elliptical enclosure expanding from underneath the columns.

All in all, this station is among the finest examples of brutalist architecture in Montreal, and perhaps in the whole country.