The Washington D.C. Metro stations were designed by Harry Weiss of Chicago with suburb graphics by Massimo Vignelli. Together, they are a powerful civic statement in the nation’s capital.
They created a series of great civic spaces that owe their design to the ancient bath vaults of Ancient Rome. That said, the system has been done in a very crisp, modern way. All of the stations are identical, most notably the details of the ceilings. The lighting cries out for some studies, with all of the different colors of light: there are shades of pink, yellow, green, and bluish tones.
The intersections of the vaults in the ceiling are expressed quite beautifully, and the insets appear to have some sound containment panels. It is a beautiful cast-in-place detail and very elegant.
This is an example of how modernism can be a neutral field to the entire city and surrounding areas that the Metro serves.
In Atlanta the MARTA system has taken the position of designing each station to be individual which costs more and looses the look and feel of the identity that the DC metro has.
Tags: metro, washington