Concrete Pour an Intricate Ballet of Shapes and Forms

It’s one thing for architects and engineers to create flowing structures to enhance esthetics in public spaces, but the execution is often a massive challenge for the construction crews.

And that’s the case in point at the Toronto Transit Commission’s Pioneer Village station on the $3.2 billion Toronto-York Spadina subway line extension where three critical components triggered some deep thinking.

Clearly the execution by Limen Structures hit the mark set by the IBI Group designers, winning a 2018 Ontario Concrete Award in the Architectural Merit-Cast-in-Place category for the exposed architectural concrete which included a curved ceiling slab, iconic rock-wall and massive sloped elliptical columns.

Amir Soleimani, general manager of Limen’s formwork division, says when they first saw the plans and realized the scope of the formwork required there was a little bit of head scratching.