Public art at Joyce SkyTrain Station

Renée Van Halm's 'Carpeting' rendered in StreetBond across the concourse at Joyce Station, commissioned through the transit system's public art program and installed during overnight non-revenue windows.

'Carpeting', by Vancouver-based artist Renée Van Halm, runs across the concourse at Joyce–Collingwood Station, installed at TransLink's SkyTrain, as a field of coloured blocks, orange, blue, pink, green, red, yellow and purple, laid out like a carpet across the pedestrian transition zones. It was commissioned through the transit system's public art program. A station concourse is a hard place for colour: continuous foot traffic, wheeled luggage and strollers, winter salt tracked in from the platform stairs, and daily wet cleaning with industrial equipment.

The piece is rendered in StreetBond, a water-based acrylic pavement coating chosen for how it holds up in that environment. The manufacturer publishes it for asphalt and concrete, with an anti-skid aggregate and an 8+ year life cycle that is recoated rather than replaced. Colour was matched to the artist's specification under both natural and station lighting, with sample panels run on site first, and the substrate was vapour-blasted back to a uniform profile before any coating went down.

Joyce Station did not close. The work happened in phased overnight windows outside revenue hours, staged after the last train and cleared, cured enough to walk on, before the first morning departures, with transit dispatch, station agents and security coordinated each night. The cure window and the overnight work window had to line up exactly; a miscue on either side would have shut the concourse, which was not an option.

The photograph shows the blocks wrapping around a tree well and a wayfinding sign, with the same colours carried up the walls of a small station structure. A transit agency or public art program planning a surface installation should ask for on-site colour panels, a masking and sequencing plan for the colour boundaries, and a cure schedule that fits inside the operating window.

Read the full story: Joyce Station: StreetBond public art installed at TransLink's SkyTrain concourse