Responsibility we were charged with was to ensure that the LRT coming through the city
would have a meaningful relationship with every community that it goes through. The
design of the project started with a realization that we were influencing something that would
go right across the city. We looked historically into the city to be inspired by something
that would move across the city and the first image we looked at was the historic railroad.
Calgary was built because of the railroad and the railroad engine, the image of the railroad
engine coming across the prairie inspired me to think of not only the connection to
Calgary's origins, but also to the plume of the engine itself and the energy that it represents
- what that means to people as something that is memorable. The second image we looked at
which is absolutely about this place is the chinook. The chinook coming across as a flat
plane of cloud compresses the sunlight and forces it into very dramatic shadows on the
landscape. So that affects our architecture and how we make buildings. It also
affects your sense of place because of the way again the sun works with the light and
so I'm very interested that it's formed by wind and by moisture but it's light that brings
it to life. And so that's the second image, the third image is an art piece by a famous
art team of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and in 1974 they built the "Running Fence" on
the Sonoma landscape in California. It was, for me, the next level of how to take something
either natural like the chinook cloud or arguably man-made like the steam plume and manifest
that into something that we build. And so, the plume to the chinook arch to the waving
fabric influence what I think the building should be like as we build the infrastructure
for the Green Line across the Calgary landscape. My goal is that we can create a consistent
pattern of building that starts from one end of Calgary in the southeast and moves all
the way up ultimately to the very north end of the city. We developed a kit of parts and
it was very important to us that we applied it, not only to the stations and the canopies,
but to some of the elements that would be on the platforms or the poles that support
the OCS (overhead catenary system) wires or the pedestrian poles. For most of the stations
it's not just merely the station you have the plaza areas, the Park and Ride, you have
bus terminals, so you have many elements that are placed in and around the stations. We
wanted to make sure that we have that link. But also, when we're going to be procuring
that many poles and that many elements it makes a lot of sense to design them efficiently
and in a way that they can easily replicate it. What's important to me is that we have
used these parts to inform every station particularly and each one is different. We see the transit
plaza as being the threshold or the porch or veranda between the station and the community
or the neighbourhood and so the transit plaza will be something that each community can
shape into their own expression within the context of the larger expression of this consistent
architecture. Some neighborhoods will be more historic some neighborhoods will be more contemporary
and everything in between, but the transit plaza will be the device that the communities
can embrace to make the station their own. A lot of the work that we did on previous
station workshops with the communities was to introduce the idea of the plazas. Each
of the stations has a plaza. That's significant space for their community and it was very
important that they have potential for a variety of uses so maybe Monday to Friday they are
primarily directed to transit users and people passing through them but on a Saturday or
Sunday it's their space that's available for a farmer’s market or even a pop-up food
trucks or some of those other uses. Or are there other uses the community would like
for these spaces. For each of the stations, majority of stations are at-grade stations,
and they are side-loaded platforms. But as well, we have a couple of stations that are
elevated stations and then in the downtown we have four below-grade stations. Most of
the elements on day one are fairly small scale but as we grow or as the additional ridership
comes in or additional development comes around the stations then the coverage of the canopies
can be added to. Part of what we've done with the design of the stations in concert with
the architectural design is to really think about how to keep the platforms very open
and of course, there's the requisite number of shelters and benches, but they'll probably
have a much cleaner, uncluttered, sort of seamless look to them. And the other aspect
of this project of course that has been talked about before is that we are low-floor platforms,
so we don't have the need for very long ramps or those connections on the back of the plazas
which are attached to the station platforms. They'll have sort of a seamless connection,
so you'll be able to walk through from the plaza onto the platforms.