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from today's Daily Commercial News:

Contractors work in dead of night to complete make-over of Museum subway station

Patricia Williams

staff writer

Re-cladding the track walls of the Toronto Transit Commission’s redesigned Museum subway station required tradesmen to work the graveyard shift.

Typically, the crew started work at about 2.30 a.m, after the Toronto subway shut down and power was cut to the third rail. They’d call it quits around 5 a.m.

“As soon as we got the go-ahead, we’d work nonstop like maniacs,” said Damiano Petrozza, president of Vaughan’s Jeviso Construction Corp., the project’s general contractor.

The track walls were re-clad in metal panels with the name of the station printed in large lettering, part of an ambitious revitalization project overseen by Diamond + Schmitt Architects.

The project team included electrical engineers Mulvey + Banani International Inc. and structural engineers Halcrow Yolles. Ontario Panelization installed the track wall panels.

The station design re-imagines the subway platform as a hypostyle hall supported by archeologically inspired columns.

Based on artifacts from the nearby Royal Ontario Museum and the Gardiner Museum, five column designs are repeated.

The fabricator, Design Plaster Mouldings, employed artists to create full-scale carvings.

The columns were cast in glass-fibre reinforced cement.

Updated ceiling lighting and a new monolithic wall finish create a contemporary backdrop for the designs.

The lion’s share of the construction was carried out evenings, from about 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Re-cladding the track walls took place in the wee small hours, from 2.30 a.m. onwards.

“The restricted hours posed the biggest challenge,” said Petrozza, who described the project as a first of its kind for his company.

Initially, the old tiles on the track walls had to be removed.

Workers then spent four months drilling holes in the concrete walls to accommodate fasteners to support the 420 new panels.

At platform level, the station’s existing 46 columns were walled off, eight at a time, and demolished. The exposed steel beams were fire-proofed before being enclosed again. Terrazzo pedestals were constructed to accommodate the columns, made up of two, 110-kilogram castings. The column halves were positioned on the pedestals and glued together using a fast-setting epoxy.

The demolition subcontractor was Demtec.

Diamond Schmitt also worked with the transit commission to streamline the way-finding and other signage in the station.

The redesigned station officially re-opened earlier this month. The $5 million project was funded in part by the Toronto Community Foundation, the TTC and the provincial government.
 
Ha! A good reason not to undergo "Station Renaissance" LOL

Pittsburgh subway station tile mural worth $15 million

Published: Thursday, April 24, 2008 | 11:37 AM ET

Canadian Press: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


PITTSBURGH - It's something that shouldn't be causing subway officials in Pittsburgh a headache, but it is.
It all has to do with a mural by Romare Bearden installed in 1984. The Port Authority of Allegheny County originally paid Bearden $90,000 for the 18-by-four-metre mural. Now it's been valued at $15 million.
Most people wouldn't consider that a problem. But officials say insuring it will cost the cash-strapped authority $100,000 annually.
The appraisal was conducted after the authority made plans to remove it during construction to extend the subway to the city's North Shore.
 
I wrote Adam a few weeks ago a nasty email regarding the stations ceiling. Here's the reply I received a few days ago - thought you guys would be interested. I'm not sure I buy the idea of a 'gallery' look.

>>>>>>
Chair Adam Giambrone has forwarded your email of recent date regarding the Museum Station renovations.

As you can appreciate, such makeovers are subject to a wide range of views and personal opinions. By way of background, the original concept was to connect the cultural reality above ground with the station below ground. In keeping with this, the ceiling of the station was designed to look like a gallery ceiling.

I thank you for allowing me the opportunity of responding.

Sincerely,

Roman Muetz
Director – Customer Information/Services

Copy: Chair Adam Giambrone
 
That's exactly the point I made on this thread three weeks ago - the ceilings of the ROM's original 1914 and 1933 galleries are exposed concrete, early Modernism really, and Libeskind has renovated them back to that state. If the TTC wants to create a simulacrum of the Museum - including the ceilings - they're going about it correctly, however garish the rest of the project is.
 
Ha! A good reason not to undergo "Station Renaissance" LOL

I wonder how much TTC architecture fans would pay (or in the case of Museum, would have paid) for just a piece of the 'iconic' washroom tiling and classic TTC signage in Toronto subway stations.
 
Hmm. I was always solidy in favour of the whimsical columns, but like many thought the way the ceiling turned out was awful. I'm surprised and disconcerted to find that the gallery ceiling explanation makes me like it a little bit more. I suspect that its mostly a fig leaf for cutting the budget, but still, a spoonful of design philosophy helps the mediocrity go down.
 
Perhaps, compared to the fake, Disneyland-inspired reinvention of some of the ROM's artifacts as subway platform support columns, the ceiling is the only thing that has authenticity?
 
Gallery ceiling concept? B.S.

They ran out of budget, "Gallery ceiling concept" was the best face-saving rationalization.
 
2402521668_4ebc40dc1e_b.jpg

The station is just awful. But the one thing I do like is the walls with the giant MUSEUM lettering. I really like it actually. I'd like to see it in more stations.
 
The station is just awful. But the one thing I do like is the walls with the giant MUSEUM lettering. I really like it actually. I'd like to see it in more stations.

Oh, it's not awful, it's just somewhat kitsch. TLS - now that's awful. At least Museum station feels like a destination now, as opposed to a quiet backwater where a subway happens to stop.

42
 
The giant MUSEUM lettering and columns are the renovations only saving grace, and pretty much the only thing they actually did.
 

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