In August 2015, PLANT was awarded the commission to design a permanent public artwork for Lyon station in the City of Ottawa’s new Confederation Line LRT. Our competition-winning concept for this downtown station celebrates the women who founded the first historical society in Ottawa and the history they helped preserve.
In 1954, one of the society’s members, Miss Anne Dewar, presented the “Last Days of Bytown,” a lively documentation of life in the community a century earlier, when it was on the verge of changing its name and becoming Canada’s capital. With Words as Their Actions laser-cuts her entire text into a curvilinear stainless steel curtain. Lacy lines of text cut through on one side in English interweave with lines cut through in French on the other, with texturing added by turned-out letters that work as bookmarks. The text is meant to be read in small increments in the brief intervals transit riders spend at concourse level, rather than all at once. Silhouettes representing the society’s 31 founders gathered in conversation preside over the curtain, passing their knowledge from one another, and to the viewer.