The revitalization of Toronto’s Union Station has been completed by locally based design practice Partisans, in collaboration with Canadian firm Dialog and Montreal-based studio GH+A. A key fixture of the renovation is the new food hall, which totals 25,000 square feet of its lower-level concourse.
The food court is home to 10 different F&B options as well as more than 600 seats to accommodate the station’s 300,000 daily travelers. High tables and receptacles are crafted with cast aluminum for an industrial design flair. A floating canopy of 210 cloud-like pods punctuate the cavernous space in reference to the disc-shaped lighting that adorned Marcel Breuer’s design of the former Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
“Our goal was to provide the public with a level of dynamism, intimacy, and artistry not typically found in food courts,” says Partisans principal Alex Josephson. “The ceiling is often an overlooked plane in the design experience. In order to recapture ceiling height at the Station’s concourse level,Partisans embraced the opportunity to marry form and function with the invention of a new sculptural ceiling product whose design integrates systems in an unprecedented way.”
