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Architectural screens: Flinders St Station, Melbourne
In 1903, signs asking the public to “Do Not Spit” were hand painted in place on the tiled walls of the Flinders St Station subway at Elizabeth St in Melbourne. ARM Architecture were tasked with translating these signs and other graphics found on the walls into artwork for new glass screens taking commuters along their journey through the bustling underground station. The redesigned signage flows into a rasterized, moving, shifting and modern graphic that follows the city’s commuters at the start and end of each day.
The subway screen accompanies commuters along a 90-metre journey. The familiar graphic elements are from the subway’s original hand-painted signage: pointing hands with shirt cuffs, platform numbers, destinations, and the classic “DO NOT SPIT ON FLOORS WALLS OR STAIRS”.
The letters are printed with opaque ceramic ink in a rasterised style (pixels, dots, lines, gaps) to create a screen that is permeable yet with a distinct presence. The patterns fluctuate between fuzzy and clear to create an augmented sense of motion, like the blur of trains moving in and out of platforms.
The orange, rusty red and mustard colour scheme gradates from light to dark and back again several times. It comes from the original cream subway tiles framed with coloured feature ones.
The main challenge was to fit a consistent, modular design into a decidedly un-modular space that has sloping floors, steps, ramps and gaps for Myki gates. Nothing in the subway is straight. Therefore, we made a collage of diagonal text fragments and patterns that don’t need to look straight either.
The letters are printed with opaque ceramic ink in a rasterised style (pixels, dots, lines, gaps) to create a screen that is permeable yet with a distinct presence.
Combining Vanceva and ImagInk delivers flexibility in colour selection, durability in application
Creating spectacular coloured glass requires specialty knowledge. Vanceva interlayers are specifically designed to be combined in layers to create thousands of custom colours. Using this system, ARM were able to efficiently order small samples to ensure they had the exact colours they were looking for, prior to adding the graphic printed elements. Most of the selected colours were complex with multiple shades required to achieve the specified hues.
ImagInk was selected forlongevity within a high traffic area. The printed surface is encapsulatedwithin the glass, easily withstanding continual wear and tear or attemptedvandalism. Printed at 720dpi, the vector graphics are perfectly transposed in 2colours across the panels to portray fine dots and linear elements. With amixture of sections of clear and printed glass, there is clear visionthroughout the entire walkway for commuters.
480sqm of interlayers across 188 panels
The relatively simple glass makeup of 13.52mm toughened laminate obscures a range of complex Vanceva layups and printed designs.
In total the project saw 188 panels encompassing 376sqm of Vanceva. The production process was tightly streamlined into colour groups, printing groups, then completely re-arranged into sequential order for delivery. All production was completed at our Perth facility and freighted to Melbourne for installation.
“The letters are printed with ImagInk ceramic inks in a rasterised style (pixels, dots, lines, gaps). That way, the screen is permeable and see-through though it has a distinct presence. The patterns fluctuate between fuzzy and clear to create an augmented sense of motion, like the blur of trains moving in and out of platforms.”
ARM ARCHITECTURE
