SLA and BIECHER ARCHITECTES, have won the international competition to develop the former location of the Ordener-Poissonniers’ railway into a socially sustainable urban development, in the heart of the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France. The 3,7-hectare site will include 1000 new residents, big public parks, offices, theater, public school, industrial design incubators, a graduate school of design, food courts and urban farming.
Train stations are usually complex programs since they must not only solve the departure and arrival of trains but also respond to the circulation of its users, provide certain services and be a connecting space between the transport systems of a city. Architects from different parts of the world have developed different solutions to this program. Below you can find 10 examples of train stations, their floor plans and sections.
Acting both as a “visionary landmark and an urban catalyst,” C.F. Møller Architects’ proposal for a new train station development in Altona, Hamburg, emphasizes the significance of green space within the city’s urban fabric. The project will have several uses, ranging from cafes, restaurants, and shops to offices and fitness centers. Its unique undulating roof landscape “embodies a collective and progressive vision of reinforcing Hamburg’s green credentials.”
John McAslan + Partners and Woods Bagot are the architectural partners delivering the Sydney Metro upgrade to Central Station, a key component of Australia’s largest public transport project. The multi-disciplinary, international design team have revealed a design that will preserve heritage qualities of the 112-year-old station while adding contemporary and innovative touches to create wider civic and commercial renewal within the space.
For 10 years this December, Zaha Hadid’s Hungerburgbahn have graced the built environment of Innsbruck, Austria. Since its conception, over 4.5 million passengers have visited one of the four train stations connecting them from downtown Innsbruck to the Norkette Mountain to Hungerburg.
Construction has begun on Penn Station’s fast-tracked Moynihan Train Hall project has begun, announced New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo in a press conference.
Located within the existing James A. Farley Building (across from the existing Penn Station entrance), the new 255,000-square-foot Train Hall will serve as a new concourse for Amtrak and Long Island Railroad passengers, while an additional 700,000-square-feet will be dedicated to commercial, retail and dining spaces.
New York City’s fast-tracked Penn Station transformation project is moving forward, as Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced the closing of the $1.6 billion deal to redevelop a large section of the James A. Farley Post Office into the new “Moynihan Train Hall.”
The project will consist of a new 255,000-square-foot terminal for the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak, increasing Penn Station’s total concourse floor space by more than 50 percent, while an additional 700,000 square feet will be developed for commercial, retail and dining spaces to create a new mixed-use civic space for West Manhattan.
A new train station in Cambridge is getting a lot of attention from a surprising audience: mathematicians. Cambridge North Station is clad in aluminum panels with a geometrical cutout design. The architecture firm, Atkins, originally claimed that the pattern was derived from Cambridge alumnus John Conway’s “Game of Life,” but eagle-eyed mathematicians soon realized that was incorrect. As the above video points out, the design is in fact based on a mathematical rule studied by Stephen Wolfram, an Oxford alumnus, much to the dismay of rival university Cambridge. Though the firm’s website still references Conway, a Senior Architectural Designer at Atkins, Quintin Doyle, has since confirmed that it was, in fact, Wolfram’s Rule 30 that they used in the design.
Known as one of the world’s grandest subway systems, the Moscow Metro is filled with materials more commonly associated with palaces or museums – marble and granite walls, bronze columns, and lavish chandeliers are just a few of the opulent textures you’ll find beneath the streets of Russia’s largest city.
Despite their renown, the Moscow government almost never allows professional photographers to capture the beauty of the stations. But in 2014, photographer David Burdney was finally given that opportunity. Visiting the system late at night after the metro had closed, Burdney was able to capture each station in its best light, and completely devoid of people.
New typologies in architecture generally arise in two ways. The first is through a reevaluation of existing typologies that cater to familiar programs such as housing, schools, or healthcare. This is done in an effort to improve on the norm and to challenge accepted architectural notions, as seen for example, in the work of Moshe Safdie and OMA. The other is when an entirely new program, site condition, or client emerges and forces the invention of a new typology simply through their design requirements.
For his Master’s degree project at the University of Alcalá in Spain, Saúl Ajuria Fernández has envisioned the essential civic building of the future: the Urban Droneport. Located in what Ajuria has identified as a “disused urban vacuum” in Madrid, Spain, the Urban Droneport “allows and optimizes the transport of goods with Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems in urban areas” - in other words, drone-delivered packages.
Architecture inherently appears to be at odds with our mobile world – while one is static, the other is in constant motion. That said, architecture has had, and continues to have, a significant role in facilitating the rapid growth and evolution of transportation: cars require bridges, ships require docks, and airplanes require airports.
In creating structures to support our transit infrastructure, architects and engineers have sought more than functionality alone. The architecture of motion creates monuments – to governmental power, human achievement, or the very spirit of movement itself. AD Classics are ArchDaily's continually updated collection of longer-form building studies of the world's most significant architectural projects. Here we've assembled seven projects which stand as enduring symbols of a civilization perpetually on the move.
Photographer Chris Forsyth has released the latest images from his photo series Metro. Having previously gone underground to capture the surreal beauty of Montreal’s metro system, Forsyth traveled to Europe to shoot stations in Munich, Berlin and Stockholm. His photographic style portrays the stations in their best light – bright, clean, colorful and completely absent of people.
"Seeing the design strengths of various metro systems, from the hand painted cave-like stations in Stockholm, to the well-lit modern platforms of Munich’s U-Bahn, I really began to feel the how good design can change your day for the better,” says Forsyth. “Whether it be awe-inspiring or simply bright and colorful, I can only imagine how it feels to start your daily commute in one of these metro stations."
Continue after the break for a sampling of Forsyth’s favorite photos from the series.
After 12 long years and a series of construction headaches, Santiago Calatrava’s $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub has finally opened to the public. Once widely regarded as a symbol of hope for post-9/11 New York, the project’s ballooning budget and security-related revisions gradually soured the opinions of the public and top design minds including Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, and provoked a multitude of mocking nicknames ranging from “Calatrasaurus” to “squat hedgehog” to “kitsch dinosaur.” All the while, Calatrava urged critics to reserve their opinion until the project’s opening. Now that day has arrived - did Calatrava receive the vindication he was insistent would come? Read on for the critics’ takes.
London-based practice Studio Egret West have developed designs for future London Underground stations which centre on a holistic approach to infrastructure design. The so-called 'Station Design Idiom' is, according to the designers, "deliberately wide-ranging." As a manifesto, it "covers small interventions, like repainting, through to full station refurbishments and new builds" and "complements existing London Underground standards and guidance and is the first port of call for all design decision-making on the network."
Atelier King Kong has unveiled the design of the new Vitry-Centre metro station in Vitry-sur-Seine, part of the Grand Paris public transport network. The station, located in the southeast portion of the red line of the Grand Paris Express, is a town center station that provides access to the Town Hall and sports and cultural facilities, “links to existing above-ground transport networks (buses) and services to come (tramway), and connects with the RD5, one of the main north-south highways of the southeastern Paris region." Learn more about the design after the break.
Grimshaw Architects, in collaboration with Arup, have revealed renderings for their proposed 25,000 square metre High Speed Two (HS2) railway terminal at Euston Station, in north London. They have developed an "incremental staged design" that will allow for the construction of the new high speed station while maintaining all existing services. Fronted by a 38 metre glazed façade, the new entrances will transform the internal circulation spaces into a "light and airy destination with shops, restaurants, and cafés."
AECOM has designed a preliminary study for a mixed-use transportation development in Solana Beach, California, as part of a response for a RFP (Request for Proposal). Located near major roads and connected to railroads, the project proposal consists of a combination of retail stores and restaurants, providing transit users with leisure spaces on their travels, in addition to parking for the nearby AMTRAK train station.
Grimshaw Architects has been asked to collaborate with New York-based Beyer Blinder Belle on a $10 billion masterplan that will modernize Washington DC's 1913 Beaux Arts Union Station. Along with the potential to triple passenger capacity, the plan aims to make the station more accessible and efficient, while integrate a new three-million-square-foot, mixed-use development by Amtrak and Akridge over its rail tracks.
"Washington DC deserves a station that serves the region on a practical level whilst celebrating the gateway to the nation’s capital," said Grimshaw partner Vincent Chang.
