Light Line Social Square - Castle Hill

Light Line Social Square is the line-wide artwork for the 8 Metro North West stations from Cherrybook to Tallawong. The artwork is embedded in the design of each station. It is made up of artful landscapes, sculptural furniture, coloured glazing in skylights, facades, lifts, stairs and escalators, train activated platform lighting, glazed tiled walls, playful paving and cooling mist installations. The artwork draws upon the recent agricultural history of the region. The geometry of the orchard groves, and the colours of their fresh produce, are translated into the grid of the station landscapes, and the signature colour at each station. In this way, Light Line Social Square references the past and connects it to the present and the future. The artwork orchestrates an interplay of colour and light, expressed over time. It is immersive and dynamic - continuously changing throughout the day, according to the light and weather conditions, and over the seasons, across the year.

Castle Hill is the first of three consecutive underground stations on the Sydney Metro North West line coming from the city. These stations are characterised by the ‘great rooms’ of the underground concourse halls, and the kaleidoscopic Skylight Lanterns. The Skylight Lanterns are illuminating and illuminated sculptural elements set within the high ceilings of the underground space and the landscaped plaza and heritage Arthur Whitling Park above. The skylights mediate inside and outside, above and below and manifest the interplay of natural and artificial light as day transitions into night. As the sun moves across the sky, the skylights cast everchanging patterns of coloured light on architectural surfaces. From dusk to dawn, and from summer to winter, they highlight our experience of diurnal and seasonal time.

Castle Hill’s signature red is in the transparent coloured glass of the Skylight Lanterns and the Colourways lifts and escalators, the Light Line programmed platform installation, the Social Sphere sculptural furniture arranged in the station plaza and park above, the red, spring flowers of the deciduous Illawarra flame trees (Brachychiton acerifolius) and summer flowering dusky coral pea (Kennedia rubicunda) understory planting.