Montreal Gazette

If people think about buildings in terms of their exteriors, then metro stations are among the most poorly understood structures in the city. The stations are, effectively, underground bunkers. Their exteriors are the ground beneath our feet. Montreal's metro stops, nearly all of them designed by different architects, show different ways of dealing with a design problem that amounts to building something in a hole in the ground. A trip along any of the lines makes it clear that the architects' methods for solving this are varied - and often fascinating. They use different ways of bringing in light, of exposing or concealing the depth of the space, of accentuating or hiding the angles created by necessary structures like escalators, multiple tracks and kiosks.