Yorkdale (TTC) - Architecture and Art

Architecture and Art

Yorkdale was designed by Arthur Erickson. The station is above ground, and also above street level. It has two tracks: northbound and southbound. A dramatic vaulted glass roof spans the length of the single centre platform. It terminates symmetrically at escalators and stairs at both ends of the platform, creating the appearance of a glass dome. The interior walls of the station at platform level are unfinished concrete, but artistically cast, and curve over the tracks to form the ceiling. The shape of the windows on these walls recalls the oval windows of subway trains. On the exterior, these concrete walls are clad with stainless steel.

Handrails on stairs leading to the platform are backlit. Platform shelters are unique to the station, designed in the oval shape which dominates many features in the station, with large windows. Like the centre pillars which hold X-shaped structural supports—distinctive in Toronto's rapid transit system to the station—they are clad in unpainted metal panels.

Yorkdale station won a Governor General's Award for Architecture in 1982, and is listed as a heritage structure in Toronto's inventory of heritage properties.

The station's glass roof originally featured an artwork by Michael Hayden—also responsible for the Sky's the Limit installation at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport—called Arc en Ciel (French for "rainbow"). This piece consisted of a large number of mercury-vapor lamps painted in various colours that would light in a pattern, running along the station in the appropriate direction whenever a train went through. In the mid-1990s, it stopped working because of damaged transformers caused by water leakage. Each transformer would have cost just $28 to repair at the time; however, because the TTC had not budgeted for its continued maintenance, it was removed at the artist's request.

At a TTC meeting in September 2010, a deal was made for Oxford Properties, owner of Yorkdale Mall which connects to the station, to pay for the restoration of the installation. The plan calls for the rebuilt piece to use LED lights, allowing for a broader range and customization of colours and patterns. Hayden requested that a maintenance contract be included, and for the piece installed by a Toronto-based company. The cost of such a reinstallation is not known (the original installation cost $100,000).