Throwback: Marina South Pier MRT Station Artwork

It was back in 2012 we were given a rare opportunity to produce two pieces of artworks with the LTA for North South Line extension at Marina South Pier Station. Prior to that, LTA had an exercise to recall the contactless SONY EZLink cards to be replaced with CEPAS EZLink cards.

We had to determine the palette of colours that could be obtained from the recalled stock in storage at a facility. We had two storerooms full to pick our samples from. There were also some uncirculated old-new stocks that were found, and that helped a little.

Everyone helped sort out and after going through about half a million cards we were left with about 50000 cards with a significant sample size for 20 different shades of colours.

Here’s what’s left after the sorting process.

After all these were done to determine the palatte, the design was made with the colours closest to the palette.

Somewhere along the line of production a shade had to be changed to suit the sample size of the shade of colour, thankfully it wasn’t a big difference.

The samples were processed with an mosaic composite builder, and printed to a reduced size before determining the panel size and matrix. Here we see the back of the print laid out after being cut into miniature panels. In the background you see the uncut Past miniature (still in a roll)

Each panel was assembled in 9 columns of 10 rows and packed accordingly. 216 panels were assembled and packed in this manner, inside a room measuring about 20 sqm.

Site visit of the Marina South Pier MRT station artwork spaces during one of the final stages of construction.

All the materials were then handed over to TOP PAVE Pte Ltd who was in charge of manufacturing the panels. Here we see a sample of the panels mounted up, and mind you they’re about 30kgs each.

The inside layer with the cards laid out in its space, all laid out on the floor at the factory.

Finally it is set in place at Marina South Pier MRT Station.

So that concludes the short run through to the MRT Station artwork we did, and indeed there’s actually more to the entire process, if you’re interested to find out, we’d be glad to talk about it. The station started operations on Sunday, 23 November 2014.

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