Celebrating 50 years of the Public Transport Centre building
The Public Transport Centre (PTC) building in East Perth has officially marked its 50th anniversary with a new public artwork unveiled to mark the milestone.
The building is one of a few in Perth, built in the mid-1970s as part of a then ambitious new architectural style: brutalism.
Taking its name from the French expression béton brut, meaning raw concrete, brutalism featured little to no beautification, making it cheaper and faster to build than traditional large-scale buildings.
As part of the 50th anniversary of the building, a new artwork has been unveiled, undertaken by Christian de Vietri, an award-winning Western Australian artist born in Kalgoorlie.
His artwork for the Public Transport Authority, Nityodita, features 127 pieces that form a colour gradient spanning from yellow to white to red to black across the length of the platform canopy.
Nityodita is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘ever manifest, always arriving, spontaneously arriving’, reflecting the continuous movement of passengers through East Perth Station, and the eternally flowing present moment.
The artwork draws inspiration from universal geometric forms that can be seen in the original architecture of the brutalist building—the point, the square, the octagon and the circle.
“The artwork is a geometry of arrival; it’s the story of manifestation told through pattern and shape and colour,” said Mr de Vietri.
“I wanted to create an artwork that would unravel in time as well as space. You have to travel to see it. And when you do, paradoxically, you arrive back at the beginning, to the point, to the source,” he said.
The Public Transport Centre remains unchanged from its 1970s appearance, with its distinctive East Perth office tower constructed in dark brown face brickwork, off-form concrete and glass with angled vertical window fins, but the organisation's structure and ways of working have transformed dramatically over the past 50 years.
In that time, the building has been at the centre of the introduction of an electrified rail network, the sale of Westrail’s freight business, construction of five new train lines, introduction of the SmartRider system, replacement of all regional railcars and the transition to electric buses.
Photos of Nityodita artwork, along platform canopy at East Perth Station, is provided courtesy of Mr de Viertri, taken by Robert Frith.