CERTEX enables art at Stockholm’s new train station

A train station is a place where we are constantly moving toward something. We enter the ticket hall, look for information, ride down an escalator or up in an elevator, and make our way to the platform. But once on the platform, while waiting for the train to arrive, we have a brief moment where we simply stand still,” begins Thomas Bernstrand as he describes his artwork Moving Space.

When the City Line in Stockholm was to be complemented with a commuter train station at Odenplan, Thomas Bernstrand was one of the artists commissioned to enhance the passengers’ experience of the station. With numerous international awards for his design and exhibitions at venues such as MoMA in New York and Colette in Paris, Thomas Bernstrand is a well-renowned furniture designer and artist. His designs are usually intended for public spaces, often in the form of street lamps and park benches.

Moving Space, as his piece at Stockholm Odenplan is called, is, according to Bernstrand himself, an illustration of the city’s vast transportation network. The artwork consists of twelve orange metal fixtures that circulate at a slow, barely noticeable pace along a 92-meter-long track made of two stainless steel wire ropes from CERTEX. The ropes have diameters of two and five millimeters with steel cores to minimize sag, and they are driven via 20 pulleys mounted on the platform ceiling, columns, and an elevator shaft.

-"When we finally pause", Thomas Bernstrand continues, "my intention is for viewers to be captivated by the fixtures’ calm movement and, for a moment, let go of everything else and simply follow the motion with their eyes."

Rare craftsmanship

Stockholm Odenplan Station was inaugurated on July 10, 2017, and getting Moving Space in place was an art in itself, says Thomas Bernstrand. Because the fixtures’ track had to run around several columns and an elevator on the platform, the steel wire ropes needed to be long-spliced on site.

Long-splicing is a technique used to join steel wire ropes by carefully braiding together the individual strands. The result is a virtually invisible splice with the rope’s full diameter maintained—a necessity for a rope to run smoothly over a pulley, as in Moving Space.

“It’s incredibly meticulous. Keeping track of every single strand like that is a craft that only a few people can master,” says Thomas Bernstrand.

One of them is Nathan Thambithurai, who works at CERTEX’s workshop in Täby, north of Stockholm.

“Nowadays, we rarely do splicing, but when we do, it usually involves long splices, eye splices, or short splices. Most commonly, we long-splice ropes for ski lifts. Most recently, I spliced a rope that drives the hare around a greyhound racing track,” explains Nathan Thambithurai.

“Wouldn’t have been possible otherwise”

Usually, splicing involves ropes with a diameter of five millimeters and above. The thinnest rope in Moving Space is just two millimeters.

“The strands were so small and packed so tightly that they were barely visible. If I had cut the wrong one, I would have had to start over—but that was never necessary.”

“Nathan did an amazing job,” says Thomas Bernstrand. “We both worked hard to make everything function, and the artwork wouldn’t have been possible without his work.”