When Station Eleven, the television adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s post-apocalyptic 2014 novel, originally aired during the winter of 2021, it felt eerily familiar — and not just because the story begins with a pandemic. Partway through episode five, many Toronto viewers may have recognized the atrium of Severn City Airport (a place that would go on to become one of the show’s principal locations) as somewhere they’d set foot in before.
Sure enough, the building depicted is not actually located in a fictional Michigan city, nor is it really an airport. It is, instead, the Ontario Science Centre, a Raymond Moriyama design opened in Toronto in 1969 — and now abruptly shuttered by the Ontario government based on concerns about the neglected landmark’s structural integrity. While several people have stepped up to offer funding and pro bono design services for repairs, the government currently plans to relocate the institution to a temporary site while it pursues a new building on Toronto’s waterfront — leaving many concerned that the current structure is slated for demolition.
We connected with three members of Station Eleven’s creative team — Patrick Somerville, who adapted Emily St. John Mandel’s book for television and served as showrunner for the 10-episode miniseries; Ruth Ammon, the show’s production designer; and Jeremy Podeswa, who directed three episodes of Station Eleven, including its finale. Below, each one shares their perspective on the Ontario Science Centre’s sudden closure and uncertain future — all while reminiscing about what it was like to film in the building back in spring 2021.
- Patrick Somerville
When I first saw a story [about the closure] on my phone, it was just unadorned news coverage, but I had an immediate emotional reaction to it. That place is where I experienced some of the most joyous, intense, difficult and moving moments of my life, and I love it deeply. It’s not just that we shot there, but what we shot there. And the fact that it was only possible because it was closed for the pandemic. You could never get a location like that for filming otherwise.
- Jeremy Podeswa
It’s been around for as long as I can remember — I grew up in Toronto, so I think my family took me there soon after it opened, and then we had school trips there over the years. It was always a place I really loved, with these amazing permanent installations in a very kid-friendly environment. It’s interesting, because it’s this brutalist building, but I somehow found it very welcoming. I never thought as a kid, “Oh, this is a severe building.”
As an adult filming there, I had to look at in a different way and see it for its pure aesthetic qualities, and not for the installations that were housed within it, but seeing the bones of it — the textures, and those dynamic shapes — I came to also really love it as a graphic thing to shoot.
- Ruth Ammon
It was so important to us for our storytelling, and we chose it because it’s such an incredible building that reflects the theme of our show: When all else fails, we have art, we have culture and we have history. We have those things in places like the Ontario Science Centre that elevate us as human beings. And that’s all there from the beginning in Raymond Moriyama’s intention for the building.
One of Station Eleven’s interwoven narrative threads follows a group of stranded travelers who remain quarantined inside an airport as 99.9 per cent of the outside world succumbs to a lethal super flu. Over the next 20 years, this community bands together to process their grief, implement solar power and raise a new generation of children. It’s not all sunny — they also exile two of their members into a month-long quarantine, leading one of them to turn against the rebuilt society. Nevertheless, the airport gains mythical status, with word spreading to other characters further afield. In the show’s final episode, a visiting theatre troupe stages a production of Hamlet in the heart of the airport — a.k.a the Ontario Science Centre’s Grand Hall.
Toronto is no stranger to cinematic role playing — Canada’s planned 2020 Venice Biennale exhibition, Imposter Cities (which was later realized at MOCA Toronto), explored how the city’s buildings often stand in for other destinations on screen. But Severn City Airport is a special case. As a setting critical to Station Eleven’s plot, its onscreen identity is so richly realized that it conveys its own strong sense of place. Part of this is credit to Ammon and her team for envisioning a transportation hub with such considered details — from the geometric patterning that abstracts the Great Lakes on the carpeting right down to the sculpture commemorating the Edmund Fitzgerald ship that hangs from the ceiling.
But a large part of the location’s onscreen monumentality is also thanks to the natural power of Raymond Moriyama’s design. (It is worth noting that Station Eleven won the trophy for Outstanding Locations in Limited Anthology Television at the 2022 Location Managers Guild Awards.) Granted, some parts of the plot required shooting at Pearson International Airport as well — but the soul of Severn City Airport is very much the Ontario Science Centre.
- Jeremy Podeswa
The airport set had to have a place for the big Hamlet performance in the finale, which means we had to find somewhere that could accommodate the stage, performance platforms and caravan that need to be moved in for that scene. And then whatever we found, we also had to be able to marry it with what we were showing from Pearson, and make those two places seem like one.
- Patrick Somerville
Because the pandemic was such a strange thing for TV production, we had this pocket of time when we knew we were probably going to be moving the show away from Chicago [where Station Eleven had originally began shooting in January 2020 before shutting down due to COVID-19], but we didn’t know to where. Usually you find a location first, and then you imagine and build around that real thing — but we didn’t have a real thing. So instead, Ruth and her team, with the help of me, Jeremy, and our other creatives kind of worked out what we wanted the museum to be first. Ruth then built that in Unreal Engine with 3D renders that we could walk through and give notes on.
That was amazing in terms of being able to imagine, but the problem with that approach was, then you find out what city you’re going to — Toronto, in our case — and you have a very important and specific design for a place, but there’s no real place that reflects that. We knew we were using one of the terminals at Pearson Airport for part of the set, but the concept we had for the rest of the space was something that could feel like the Globe Theatre. Lo and behold, we went to every single place in Toronto and nothing worked. But then we heard the Science Centre was maybe going to be possible — maybe, maybe not — because of ongoing COVID closures.
- Ruth Ammon
It’s important to the story that remarkable things be remembered, so we wanted to show places that really mattered. The airport couldn’t be cheap — it had to be meaningful and visually impactful. And I really wanted a rotunda. When I first walked into the Ontario Science Centre, I dropped to my knees. It was like, “Hallelujah.” Great atriums like that allow the mind some quiet. In a museum, they help you really take in the culture or history or art around you. With that in mind, we didn’t want to overcomplicate the screen with lots of pieces of set decoration, but to keep the frame clean and use the architecture to tell the story.
Apart from adding check-in desks and car rental kiosks, Ammon focused on maintaining the Grand Hall’s sense of expansive breathing room. As the show’s team explored the rest of the building and fell in love with other aspects of the design, they started to build scenes around them. Originally shown with ads for beer, coffee and fudge when the show’s characters first land in Severn City, the ravine bridge walkway is later shown hand-painted with a timeline of post-pandemic history in the finale. The biggest challenge: convincing Station Eleven‘s audience that Pearson Airport and the Ontario Science Centre were actually the same place.
- Patrick Somerville
Ruth and I were very excited about the Science Centre’s rounded walls, because we could build a curve on the Pearson side and create this seamless idea of someone walking around it while actually moving from one location to the next. And then brass is all over the Science Centre, so she built that into the Pearson side too. Matching two locations is the art of finding subtle details that no one pays attention to, but at the same time, everyone does, and then mimicking those in the other location. And then somehow, psychologically, you pull off this magic trick where nobody questions these two locations being the same place.
Using Pearson Airport and the Ontario Science Centre as sets for Severn City Airport made for a kind of poetic homecoming for Station Eleven — while the early part of Emily St. John Mandel’s book is set in Toronto, the show had set and shot those scenes in Chicago instead. So even though Severn City Airport is sited in Michigan in the miniseries — its exact location is not specified in the book — the fact that it was portrayed by Toronto buildings means that some of Station Eleven’s original hometown still makes its way into the screen adaptation. (The Scarboro Golf and Country Club can also be seen in the show alongside other Ontario locations used for other parts of the story.)
To watch Station Eleven, particularly back when it originally aired during the Omicron wave, was to experience something deeply tragic yet ultimately triumphant and enlightening. The television tour de force became a reminder to cherish the return of post-pandemic life. In turn, visiting the museum for the first time in the aftermath of viewing the miniseries felt like walking through an important, joyful epilogue to the story. On Station Eleven’s Reddit channel, people have even posted photos of their own pilgrimages to the site.
- Jeremy Podeswa
I think it speaks to the power of the show, but also, it’s not like people are standing around doing that at Pearson Airport, right? The Science Centre is the physical manifestation of the show that they’re attracted to, rather than any of the other places around Toronto that we shot at that don’t have as much meaning.
- Ruth Ammon
The structure elevates the show’s feeling of hope. The story starts with despair, but what we end up with is hope. And now [with the building’s closure], that hope is going to be destroyed.
One of the major messages of Station Eleven is the way that meaningful art endures and heals. In the aftermath of the story’s pandemic, some characters cling desperately to the words in a science-fiction graphic novel, repeating them over and over again like a kind of personal creed. Another character assembles a so-called Museum of Civilization, collecting designs like cell phones and laptops that reveal insights into the past. (Located in the airport’s air traffic control tower, this museum set was built on a soundstage to match the brutalist style of the Ontario Science Centre.) Meanwhile, a group of theatre lovers who dub themselves The Traveling Symphony band together to start a Shakespeare troupe. In the intersection of several different plot lines, these nomads eventually visit the airport and stage a spectacular performance of Hamlet.
- Jeremy Podeswa
Putting on Hamlet in that space, in the middle of the night during COVID when there were no live performances of any kind, anywhere, was something really magical. The scene is lit with torch light, and the texture of the walls pick up the light so that you can see the graphic shape of them really well. There was a revolving stage at one point, and all these other great, old-fashioned theatre things that were very primitive but very effective.
There’s this amazing moment where one of the actors in the play walks through playing the ghost of Hamlet’s father, carrying a torch and wearing two stacked skull masks. There were all these kids watching it and they were just so delighted. It was scary and fun and beautiful and I just remember how fabulous shooting that was.
Much like theatre or comic books or historic artifacts, great architecture allows us to feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. Raymond Moriyama’s design was envisioned to bring people together, offering a hands-on learning experience that makes key scientific concepts accessible and interactive. It has acquired deeper significance with each passing year.
- Ruth Ammon
When we finally cleared out the production and it was an empty space, a lot of our crew members from Toronto just stood there saying, “I remember coming here with my mom or dad,” and “I remember seeing this and that show as a kid.” Dragging a kid to a museum might be more difficult these days, but once you get them there, they’re going to feel the shape of the room, the height of the ceilings, and the texture of the materials — and all of that is going to impact them to stop and contemplate the things they’re looking at.
- Jeremy Podeswa
It was a fun thing to be somewhere that was such a familiar place to me, but then to transform it into this completely other thing. I had a lot of flashbacks. I remember telling everybody on the crew and cast about this installation with these giant discs, where you could whisper at one end of the room and somebody at the other end of the room would hear it.
Both Ammon (who spent two years working in Toronto — first on Station Eleven and then on another project that shot in the city) and Podeswa see the Ontario Science Centre as a rare gem among the rest of Toronto’s architecture.
- Jeremy Podeswa
When I went to Ryerson [now Toronto Metropolitan University], I always found a lot of the brutalist buildings there quite depressing — just dark and oppressive and foreboding. But I never found the Science Centre depressing. Partly I think that’s because of the indoor-outdoor quality and the way that it merges with its environment — there are these beautiful corridors where all you see is trees and the ravine. It feels very spacious and connected to its outside world. It’s something that’s really aware of its surroundings and sits in those surroundings in a very nice way. And it feels quite organic — like some sort of fossil structure.
- Ruth Ammon
Raymond Moriyama is a world-renowned Canadian architect. So let’s just start with that legacy. People become known as great architects because their buildings mean something to the people who experience them. I have spent my life traveling the world and going to the great cities of historic architecture. Both in America and in Canada, we need to hold onto these things. We need to protect and take care of them. Because you can’t get those things back.
Toronto is an incredible city with incredible history, but many of the new buildings have no meaning and no perspective — it’s massive, cheap stuff that entertains the eye for half a second. Whereas the Ontario Science Centre has these gorgeous brass handrails that you just don’t get anymore. The craftsmanship, the detailing and the consideration for the curves in the combed concrete — there is every single reason on earth to save this building.
For his part, Somerville sees a parallel between the closure of the Ontario Science Centre and the debate surrounding another architectural landmark featured in Station Eleven: Chicago’s Thompson Center.
- Patrick Somerville
For a while, the Thompson Center was another building that a city was trying to explode — again because of some very quick bureaucratic decision-making committee in a closed room that no one knew about it — and it sparked a huge public debate. People gathered and protested and said, “That’s us. It’s special. It’s unique.” [In the end, the building was bought by Google, which is currently renovating it to serve as a Chicago headquarters.]
Station Eleven was this wonderful dance with interesting architecture. In the show’s earlier timeline, we imagined that [the show’s character] Miranda was walking around seeing buildings in Chicago, and then using those buildings as part of the inspiration for her graphic novel [a science-fiction saga named Station Eleven that gives the story its name]. So the Thompson Center, which you see Miranda visit in episode 3, became our model for the actual Station Eleven space station that you see later in the show. These little moments that we have when we walk by a building cause an emotional reaction in us — and that was very important to the ethos of the show.
We only picked buildings for the show that had a clear intentionality to their design, because if you see that intent, you feel the human behind them who had a vision and then insisted on seeing it through. In the end, Station Eleven is a show about knowing that you need to get rid of a lot of the past to move forward, but at the same time, knowing that you have to keep special things and never let go — because they mean too much. [The show’s character] Tyler would say, “There is no before,” and try to blow it up. But the point of the show is that there is a before. It hurts sometimes, but it’s part of you — and you can’t just blow it up. It matters to keep the right things.
Along with surviving a fictional apocalypse, the Ontario Science Centre is designed for real-life longevity, too — it just needs the necessary investment to extend its lifespan. If the set designers of Station Eleven can convincingly stage the Ontario Science Centre as an airport, then surely Toronto’s many talented architects, engineers and construction workers can update it for a new era. Let’s give them that opportunity.
Particularly coming out of a historic pandemic that demanded collaboration from our best scientific minds, we should not be turning our back on a place that has been imparting the wonders of science for the past five decades. As Emily St. John Mandel’s story so powerfully demonstrates, the longer we survive, the more necessary it becomes to honour and exalt the great works of those who came before us. If we can just get the Ontario Science Centre’s roof fixed, perhaps we can even arrange for a Station Eleven screening in the Imax Dome.
“I remember damage, then escape.”
Station Eleven is available to stream now on Crave.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
An oral history of how the now-endangered architectural landmark came to star in a television masterpiece.