Mascot Station’s new multimillion-dollar upgrade has taken off with commuters, featuring flight-themed perforated metal photos manufactured by Arrow Metal to honour the station’s busy Sydney Airport line.
The giant perforated metal photos, installed in the station’s new escalator and lift areas, show the early days of aviation and are based on historic pictures supplied to our client by project architects.
In our brief, the perforated metal photos had to look ‘old’, not just in colour tone and detail but also in the punched metal itself. This presented our team with a challenge: Given the interior location and no weather to naturally rust the panels over time, how could we create an instant, authentic aged effect?
The answer to achieving the old, rusted look specified in the brief was to use a particular type of metal sheet as the photo canvas – Corten steel.
Corten steel – known as weathered steel – develops a rust-like appearance when exposed to the elements. But rather than deteriorating the metal, the brown coating protects the metal, ensuring longevity and strength. This rusted effect can happen quickly in the right conditions. For this project, the panels were exposed to water and sunlight for just 24 hours.
The result was a true-to-life, slightly rusted look that perfectly matched our client’s requirements. Importantly, this effect will not deepen or fade with time or compromise the imagery, ensuring the perforated metal photos will look just as good years from now.
We used our PixelPerf technology to punch the aviation imagery into 1.6mm thick Corten steel. PixelPerf™ is Arrow Metal’s custom perforation service that can replicate an image, photo, logo, or illustration in perforated metal.
Click on photos to enlarge
For Mascot station, we first turned the supplied images into CAD drawings, digitally perforating the image into different hole sizes and splitting it across several equal-sized panels for installation. The CAD drawings were then fed into our software-controlled perforating machinery, ensuring exact replication of every detail in the original pictures.
As a final touch, the finished panels were installed over transparent acrylic opal sheets to softly diffuse backlighting.
Mascot Station is now fit for the future with improved accessibility and an impressive, eye-catching link to its airport destination thanks to the creative use of perforated metal photos. This project is a great example of the many styles and effects that we can achieve – including bringing historic pictures back to life.
To learn more about this process, see our blog here, and for similar work, take a look at our Archibald Residences project, which also uses old imagery.
Talk to our expert team to explore specifying perforated metal for your next project. Call (02) 9748 2200 or email sales@arrowmetal.com.au
Browse or download our Perforated Metal Catalogue or Project Look Book for more perforated metal inspiration.
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