Among the nearly 40 lift stations across Calgary that help move the water we've used from our homes and businesses through 4,500 km of sanitary pipes, Forest Lawn Lift Station is a little different. Embedded in the surface of the station is a lighting system depicting a scaled map of the sanitary pipes of the Forest Lawn community connected to the station. The flow of wastewater varies during the day and the sensors monitoring these variations of flow provide important information for the management of the network. Uniquely, at this station they also control the colour changes of the map to reflect the current flow levels of the system below ground, revealing a hidden aspect of our environment and a system that follows the rhythm of our daily lives.
Forest Lawn Lift Station was created through the award-winning Public Art program Watershed+. It fostered a collaborative process between artists, engineers, and other subject matter experts and integrated creativity in the thinking of urban infrastructure. At Forest Lawn, Lead Artists Sans façon worked in collaboration with engineers, architects, and lighting experts to create this lift station, which is both functioning infrastructure and an artwork.