New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has installed yellow safety barriers in a subway station to mitigate "intrusions" onto the train tracks.

The bright yellow barriers are part of a safety pilot program monitored by New York City Transit (NYCT), which the organisation will study and scale up if successful.

"It's still in an experimental phase," said MTA CEO Janno Lieber in a statement. "We will be watching carefully to determine if the barriers are effective at deterring track intrusions without interfering with passenger circulation. If they pass the test, we will be ready to deploy widely."

Dispersed periodically along the length of a station, the metal barriers sit directly adjacent to support columns and just before the yellow tactile warning strip that lines a platform edge.

They leave half of the gaps between columns open and block the remaining space to decrease the possibility commuters would fall, be pushed, or enter into the tracks below.

The first batch of barriers was installed in a Uptown Manhattan station at 191 Street, with plans to install the remaining test fleet at a Coney Island station, a station in Downtown Brooklyn, and a fourth location that has yet to be determined.

The program follows a 2022 MTA report that studied reasons behind track intrusions and possible solutions to prevent them, which cites pushing, suicide, intoxication, mental illness, and slipping to be some of the reasons commuters could enter onto tracks.

"Safety in the subway system is something that customers consistently cite as a core driver of their satisfaction and is a top priority for us at New York City Transit,” said NYCT president Richard Davey.

"This pilot program will help us determine the most effective ways to keep subway customers safe and focused on getting to their destination, while also addressing track intrusion."

Another recent citywide initiative in New York included the installation of a new public trashcan designed by Group Projects, while recent safety design includes the installation of nets underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Franscisco

The photography is by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority 

The post "Experimental" safety barriers trialled on New York subway platform appeared first on Dezeen.

The latest edition of our Dezeen Debate newsletter features a brick metro station in Tehran. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now.

KA Architecture Studio designed an entrance to the Jahad Metro Plaza comprised of barrel-vaulted forms made from handmade bricks.

Commenters were in awe of the structure. One found the "absence of exposed concrete with vaulted forms" refreshing. Another praised the "modern twist" on "ancient and original forms".

Other stories in this week's newsletter that fired up the comments section included the reveal of OMA's first major public building in the UK, the completion of BIG's supertall skyscraper in New York and a wearable CNC machine.

Dezeen Debate

Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Debate or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design.

The post Dezeen Debate features "refreshing" metro station in Tehran appeared first on Dezeen.

Iranian practice KA Architecture Studio has completed the Jahad Metro Plaza in Tehran, creating a new "democratic open space" around the station that is sheltered by a cluster of barrel-vaulted forms.

Located on a busy traffic intersection near central Tehran, the new entrance for the Meydan E-Jahad metro station forms part of a wider initiative to make the city more "pedestrian-oriented" after decades of car-focused development.

KA Architecture Studio also wanted to recognise the role of the metro station as an open, public space, particularly in the wake of recent protests against the oppression of women in Iran.

"The recent protest movements in Iran started from a point in Tehran's subway, and these places are the place of conflict in the metropolis of Tehran between the government and the people," KA Architecture Studio founder Mohammad Khavarian told Dezeen.

"For this reason, we thought that the primary need has changed from a simple entrance to a covered urban event space – a democratic open space," he continued.

Handmade bricks were used to construct the barrel vaulted forms that cover the station's entrance, providing a sheltered route into the station itself and a stepped seating area.

"Our strategy in this project started with the definition of a roof with free and unobstructed entry to define the space below it all day and night," explained Khavarian.

"This roof creates the definition of the space below, and due to the harsh climate of Tehran in summer and winter, it provides a place to centralise the gathering of young people and wandering citizens around the city."

To the northeast, the corner of the site has been finished with stone paving and low brick benches incorporating planting, creating a flexible space that can be used by performers, street sellers and the public.

"Currently, local peddlers and users and friendly groups are used in these spaces as a centre to gather around each other, and local musicians are also engaged in playing music that is not allowed in Iran," said Khavarian.

Since the completion of Jahad Metro Plaza, which has been shortlisted in the infrastructure and transport project category of Dezeen Awards 2023, four other station redevelopments have completed in Tehran, one of which was also designed by KA Architecture Studio.

Many architecture studios in Iran either ceased work entirely or looked to consider how the spaces they can create spaces that would serve as better democratic forums following the recent wave of protests in the country.

The photography is by Mohammad Hassan Ettefagh.

The post KA Architecture Studio tops Tehran metro station with brick barrel vaults appeared first on Dezeen.

The King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which was designed by UK studio Zaha Hadid Architects, has been revealed nearing completion.

Set to open early next year, the 45,000-square-metre metro station was built to serve the nearby King Abdullah Financial District, which is one of 14 giga projects under development in Saudi Arabia.

The station is one of 85 that are planned to serve the Riyadh metro, which is due to open to its first passengers next year. Dezeen observed test trains running at the station.

It will be one of the largest on the network, serving as an interchange between three lines as well as the under-construction King Abdullah Financial District monorail.

Designed by the late Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, the metro station was the winning design in a competition held in 2013.

The five-storey building contains six platforms wrapped in a steel framework supporting a series of curved, gridded forms informed by Mashrabiya screens.

A series of footbridges will connect the building to the nearby financial district, which contains 61 towers and skyscrapers by studios including Saudi practice Omrania, US studios SOM, Gensler and HOK and UK studios CallisonRTKL and Foster + Partners.

According to the studio, the internal circulation routes were created by mapping the anticipated pedestrian flows and these waves – along with desert sands – also informed the station's exterior.

"Predicted rail, car and pedestrian traffic across the site has been modelled, mapped and structured to optimise internal circulation and avoid congestion," said the studio at the time of the completion.

"The resulting configuration is a three-dimensional lattice defined by a sequence of sine waves, which act as the spine for the building's circulation."

"These sine waves extend to the station's exterior where facade patterning reduces solar gain and geometric perforations contextualise the station within its environment," it continued.

"The overall composition echoes patterns generated by desert winds in the sane, where multiple frequencies and reverberations generate complex repetition in natural formations."

The King Abdullah Financial District is one of numerous giga projects being developed in Saudi Arabia as part of the Vision 2030 plan to transform the country away from an economy based on oil. We recently rounded up 14 giga projects under construction in the country.

One of the mega projects, Neom, recently unveiled its latest region, Leyja, which will feature three architecture-designed boutique hotels.

The photography is by Tom Ravenscroft.

The post Zaha Hadid Architects' sinuous metro station nears completion in Riyadh appeared first on Dezeen.

London's much-anticipated Elizabeth Line finally opens today. As it is unveiled, here is a roundup of 10 metro stations from across the globe that have been updated in recent years.

The Elizabeth Line, or Crossrail, is a gargantuan infrastructure project that will see large new trains running 118 kilometres through London and well beyond, slashing journey times in the south of England.

Dezeen previously published a guide to the architecture of the various new London stations, which were designed by a range of different architecture studios.

But the British capital is not the only city to have upgraded its underground railway network since the turn of the millennium.

Here are 10 architect-designed metro stations from around the world:

Elizabeth Line, UK, by various architects

The Elizabeth Line features 10 new central underground stations designed by architecture studios including Aedas, Hawkins\Brown, WilkinsonEyre and Allies and Morrison.

These stations were created to be functional and understated. For example, corners follow the smooth curve of the train tunnels to reduce the risk of collisions between commuters.

"Everything is sized for the size that it needs to be to cope with the people that need to move through the system," the project's head of architecture, Julian Robinson, told Dezeen in an interview.

Find out more about the Elizabeth Line ›

Line 9, China, by J&A and Sepanta Design

Architecture studios J&A and Sepanta Design created 13 stations for Line 9 of the Chengdu metro network in China.

Spanning 22 kilometres, this underground rail line features stations with a mixture of fluid lines and shapes informed by local flora and fauna. For example, the design for lilac-hued Jincheng Avenue takes cues from lotus flowers.

Hailed as the first unmanned metro line in the west of China, Line 9's trains communicate with each other using the 5G mobile network.

Find out more about this Chengdu metro line ›

Orienktaj station, Denmark, by Cobe and Arup

Architecture office Cobe and engineering firm Arup created two metro stations as part of a docklands development in Copenhagen, one of which is elevated and forms a landmark structure.

"Orientkaj station celebrates the industrial architecture of the harbour," said Cobe founder Dan Stubbergaard. "The station outline is a large, bold and simple silhouette evoking the cranes, containers and warehouses you see in the docklands."

Find out more about Orienktaj station ›

Stations at Doha Metro, Qatar, by UNStudio

Thirty-seven vaulted stations were created for Qatar's driverless Doha Metro system by Dutch architecture office UNStudio, in collaboration with Qatar Rail Architecture Department.

According to UNStudio, the stations' designs aim to preserve traditional Qatari architecture and Doha's history while also reflecting the city's modern reputation.

"The vault was chosen as this referential bridge between past and present," explained the firm.

Find out more about these Doha Metro stations ›

Stations for Noord/Zuidlijn, the Netherlands, by Benthem Crouwel Architects

Dutch firm Benthem Crouwel Architects designed seven stations for the Noord/Zuidlijn metro line in Amsterdam – two above ground, and five below.

Each station is linked by a palette of smooth materials designed to be easy to clean and replace, while entrances were left uncovered to create a sense of continuous public space.

Find out more about these Noord/Zuidlijn stations ›

Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station, Canada, by Grimshaw Architects

Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station is the north terminus of the western section of Toronto Transit Commission's 1 train line in Canada.

Global firm Grimshaw Architects created a swooping, shell-like roof fitted with mirrors underneath it for the station, designed to redirect natural and artificial light around the space.

"We wanted to bring daylight down into the box for wayfinding and passenger experience," said Grimshaw partner Juan Porral.

Find out more about Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station ›

The Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz S-Bahn station, Germany, by Max Dudler

Illuminated glass blocks line the 40-metre-long tunnel that makes up this metro station in Leipzig by Swiss architect Max Dudler.

A material palette of harsh concrete is set against these lit-up elements, while the platform features a pale terrazzo finish.

Completed in 2013, Dudler won a competition to design the station in 1997 with a proposal that planned for a glowing tunnel.

Find out more about The Wilhelm-Leuschner Platz S-Bahn station ›

The Angle Lake Transit Station and Plaza, USA, by Brooks + Scarpa

Californian firm Brooks + Scarpa wrapped a Seattle transit facility in a bright blue, undulating aluminium screen that takes cues from the motion of a dance performance.

More than 7,500 panels were used to create the screen, which was formed by connecting two curves with a series of straight lines using ruled surface geometry, according to the architecture office.

The Angle Lake Transit Station and Plaza is elevated rather than underground, serving as a stop along a light rail line that connects Seattle's airport to the downtown district and the University of Washington.

Find out more about The Angle Lake Transit Station and Plaza ›

Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension Project, Canada, by Will Alsop 

As part of the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension Project, British architect Will Alsop created two stations in the Canadian city's Pioneer Village and Finch West neighbourhoods.

Both stations are characterised by cantilevered roofs, polished concrete interior walls and distinctive pops of colour that make them recognisable throughout their spaces.

"The subway station entrances were designed as a pair of sculptural structures; their height exceeding that necessary, to increase their visibility," said Alsop.

Find out more about these Toronto-York metro stations ›

Stations at M4 metro line, Hungary, by Spora Architects

Local studio Spora Architects designed a pair of stations for the M4 metro line in Budapest with excavated walls featuring crisscrossing concrete beams.

Daylight from street level was introduced into the stations through a construction method in which the spaces were excavated from top-to-bottom, rather than mined.

Find out more about these stations on the M4 metro line ›

Dezeen is on WeChat!

Click here to read the Chinese version of this article on Dezeen's official WeChat account, where we publish daily architecture and design news and projects in Simplified Chinese.

The post Ten 21st-century underground railway stations from around the world appeared first on Dezeen.

This week on Dezeen, we rounded up 10 new central stations along the Elizabeth Line, the highly anticipated subterranean railway that opens in London next week.

With the Elizabeth Line set to open on 24 May, our guide to its architecture focuses on the central section of the line that includes stations designed by architecture studios WilkinsonEyre and Hawkins\Brown.

Also known as Crossrail, the long-awaited project is the biggest expansion of London's underground railway network in more than a century.

In architecture news, Dezeen reported on the opening of search engine company Google's new office campus in Silicon Valley, California.

Designed by architecture studios BIG and Heatherwick Studio, the Bay View campus has sweeping, scale-like panels across its roof. As well as containing two office buildings for Google employees, the campus has an events centre and 240 short-term employee accommodation units.

We continued our series on deconstructivism with a profile piece on Canadian architect Frank Gehry. The profile traces Gehry's oeuvre from his beginnings as a student in Los Angeles, to winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989 and creating cultural projects across the globe.

Following his profile, we revisited Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, a building that reignited the city's economy and brought global attention to deconstructivism.

In an opinion piece, architect and urbanist Vishaan Chakrabarti argued that "Goldilocks" buildings – a term he coined to describe high-density, low-rise urban housing models – are the key to accommodating another three billion people on the planet.

Chakrabarti said that over the next 80 years, as populations grow and continue to put a strain on the environment, it could solve our global housing and climate problems.

In California, Louis Vuitton debuted its 2023 cruise collection at the Salk Institute, a brutalist building by US architect Louis Kahn that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.

The French fashion house showcased a range of shimmering garments that look like body armour against a backdrop of the setting sun.

Popular projects this week included a home on stilts in Maine, a Portuguese farmhouse and a multi-generational home in England.

Our lookbooks this week focused on bedrooms with mezzanine levels and green living rooms that prove the colour's versatility.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

The post This week we revealed the architecture of the Elizabeth Line appeared first on Dezeen.

With the highly anticipated Elizabeth Line railway project opening in London on 24 May, Dezeen rounds up the 10 new central section stations, including designs by WilkinsonEyre and Hawkins\Brown.

Stations on the central section of the Elizabeth Line, which runs mainly underground through the British capital, will open next week.

The £18.8 billion infrastructure project, also known as Crossrail, has been decades in the making and subject to heavy delays and budget rises.

It will represent the biggest expansion to London's underground railway network for more than a century, with trains running 118 kilometres across the south of England from Reading to Shenfield.

Nine different architecture studios were appointed to design the various London stations, with a consortium led by Grimshaw Architects ensuring line-wide consistency.

In an interview with Dezeen, Julian Robinson, head of architecture for the Elizabeth Line, explained: "A lot of the inspiration really is looking back towards the heritage of design with regards to London transport."

"But because of the scale of what this is, it's relatively new in its approach, certainly for the UK," he added. "This is new generation, really."

Read on to find out more about the architecture of the ten central stations:

Paddington by Weston Williamson + Partners

Designed by Weston Williamson + Partners, the westernmost station on the Elizabeth Line's central section is Paddington. It was added on to the famous mainline terminus built in the 19th century by pioneering Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Despite descending 20 metres below ground, the new station still has natural light at platform level thanks to a 120-metre glass and steel canopy printed with an artwork by American artist Spencer Finch. Named Cloud Index, it presents a picture of the sky that appears to change throughout the day.

Bond Street by John McAslan + Partners

Bond Street station, in London's wealthy Mayfair neighbourhood, will not open this month, having been hit by a series of construction problems that have seen its budget increase from £111 million to £660 million.

John McAslan + Partners has designed two new street-level ticket halls for the station topped with large new mixed-use buildings. Both ticket halls will have grand colonnades at their entrances aligned with beams on the high, coffered ceilings inside.

Tottenham Court Road by Hawkins\Brown

Architecture firm Hawkins\Brown wanted the station at Tottenham Court Road, a major gateway to London's West End, to cater for everyone from the regular commuters to the theatre-goers, the Oxford Street shoppers and those seeking the Soho nightlife.

At the Soho ticket hall, dark and theatrical details were used, such as black metal cladding and dramatic stainless steel downlighting. The opposite entrance at the foot of the 1960s Centre Point tower is bright and well lit with extensive white and red glass.

Farringdon by Aedas

The two new access points to the Elizabeth Line at Farringdon were designed by international architecture firm Aedas. At the western end, a concourse has been devised to encourage people to move through at pace, with an artwork depicting tumbling diamonds referencing the nearby Hatton Garden diamond quarter.

A new ticket hall at the other end is intended to feel like an extension of the street through large corner entrances and flooring made from distinctive City of London paving stones, and also nods to the iconic brutalist Barbican Estate a few hundred metres away.

Liverpool Street by WilkinsonEyre

A folded concrete ceiling is the main architectural flourish by architecture firm WilkinsonEyre at Liverpool Street's Elizabeth Line station, squeezed into a tight space below the heart of London's financial district between sewers and existing rail tunnels.

The ceiling was designed to maximise the perception of height and create a feeling of scale and movement in the constrained spaces, with mica crystals mixed into the pre-cast white concrete to glow in the indirect lighting.

Whitechapel by BDP

International studio BDP overhauled the existing Whitechapel station to accommodate the Elizabeth Line, adding a swooping raised concourse with a timber ceiling and a green roof that bridges across the tracks, designed to improve connectivity in the local area.

The concourse is mostly hidden from view on the street behind the original modest Victorian station frontage, which has been refurbished with a widened stone-paved forecourt.

Canary Wharf by Adamson Associates Architects and Foster + Partners

Yellow glass adds a rare splash of colour to the escalators down to the Elizabeth Line platform at Canary Wharf, a major business district in southeast London, designed by locally based firm Adamson Associates Architects.

The station sits below a five-storey mixed-use development called Crossrail Place, designed by British studio Foster + Partners, topped with a 310-metre timber lattice roof sheltering a large rooftop garden, all surrounded by the waters of West India Quay.

Custom House by Allies and Morrison

With its long row of columns and beams, the Elizabeth Line station at Custom House was informed by the architecture of Greek temples, according to London firm Allies and Morrison.

Thousands of pre-cast concrete segments were used to build the free-standing structure, which has an elevated concourse sheltered by a translucent canopy roof that provides a touch of delicacy.

Woolwich by Weston Williamson + Partners

British firm Weston Williamson + Partners, which also designed the Elizabeth Line station at Paddington, has referenced Woolwich's strong military heritage by cladding a row of hefty columns on bronze plating with strips of regimental colours.

Elsewhere in the station, which is part of a major new masterplan for the site including 3,750 new homes, London brick features extensively alongside perforated steel cladding.

Abbey Wood by Fereday Pollard

At the end of the Elizabeth Line in southeast London is Abbey Wood, designed by architecture firm Fereday Pollard. Journey times from here to central London will halve when Crossrail starts running on 24 May.

The station building, elevated above the railway in order to open onto a major flyover road, has been constructed using robust natural materials, with a granite-paved concourse and a sturdy timber roof. From above, the building is shaped like a manta ray, fanning out at either side into canopies sheltering staircases down to the platforms.

The images are courtesy of Crossrail/Transport for London.

The post Dezeen's guide to the architecture of the Elizabeth Line appeared first on Dezeen.

Ahead of Crossrail's long-awaited opening this month, Dezeen was given an exclusive tour of one of its stations by Julian Robinson, head of architecture for the mammoth subterranean railway in London.

"It wasn't a desire to depart from the Jubilee Line," said Julian Robinson, referring to the 1999 extension of the Jubilee line – the last major addition to the London Underground network known for the ambitious architecture of some of its stations. "This is more of an evolution of the Jubilee Line."

"It's probably more mannered, a more rationalised approach," he told Dezeen, standing in front of a serenely curving concrete wall on the pristine Elizabeth Line platform underneath Farringdon station in central London.

Crossrail biggest upgrade of network for more than a century

On 24 May, three-and-a-half years later than planned and £4 billion over budget, Crossrail will finally open in London. It will be known in operation as the Elizabeth Line.

The trains, which will eventually run 118 kilometres across the south of England from Reading to Shenfield, will carry up to 1,500 passengers each and run every few minutes.

The line will slash journey times and expand London's 160-year-old underground railway network by 10 per cent in the biggest single upgrade for more than a century.

Overall, it is a vast, £18.8 billion feat of engineering that has been decades in the making. Seven million tonnes of earth was excavated to dig 42 kilometres of deep tunnels.

According to Robinson the stations, which were designed by architecture studios including Aedas, Hawkins\Brown, WilkinsonEyre and Allies and Morrison, are both a response to, and a celebration, of the engineering achievement.

"It's not an architecturally designed space, it's not that we decided that yes, we're going to have here a 12-metre diameter tunnel," he said.

"That's not how it works. Everything is sized for the size that it needs to be to cope with the people that need to move through the system."

Sometimes the engineering has been used as a design advantage. For example, corners are curved rather than right-angled, eliminating blind turns and reducing the risk of collisions between hurrying commuters.

That was achieved by fixing cladding straight onto the sprayed-concrete tunnels, rather than adding a second layer of sharper-edged concrete as is conventional.

The engineering-first approach is also evident in the aesthetic finish of the stations.

"The choice of materiality really was one of key things the team came up with," said Robinson. "We wanted everything to be self-finished, so it's not lots of painted surfaces, it's raw materials, concrete, reflecting the concrete structure behind not only in its form, but also in its materiality, but in a much more expressive manner."

Robinson is keen to frame the Elizabeth Line as the latest chapter in London's rich transport design story, exemplified by the famous Underground map and roundel logo.

"A lot of the inspiration really is looking back towards the heritage of design with regards to London transport," he explained. "But because of the scale of what this is, it's relatively new in its approach, certainly for the UK. This is new generation, really."

Like many others involved in Crossrail, Robinson worked with British-Italian architect Roland Paoletti on the extension of the Jubilee Line, completed in 1999.

Crossrail designed to have line-wide identity

"[Paoletti] had a vision of having different design teams in each station, but he wanted that common thread, that identity," said managing director of Maynard Design Consultancy Julian Maynard, who was part of the C100 team led by Grimshaw Architects that was tasked with ensuring a consistent, line-wide identity.

"He had left the UK back in the '50s, when there was a very, very strong heritage and identity for transport, and when he came back he thought that had been eroded," Maynard told Dezeen.

The same principle was applied to Crossrail, where again individual architecture studios were commissioned to design each station but using common elements throughout, known more technically as "line-wide components".

"What we're trying to get strategically is that the train is the strongest element of the line identity, so the further you move towards the train the more common the environment becomes," explained Robinson.

This common environment is defined by features such as the free-standing "totems" tidily housing speakers, lighting and power sockets as well as signage.

Meanwhile, floor-to-ceiling platform barriers bearing high-tech live information screens nod towards the blacks and stainless steel of the Elizabeth Line trains.

The Jubilee Line extension was characterised by the ambitious architecture of its stations – from the cathedral-like Canary Wharf, designed by Foster + Partners, to the Hopkins Architects-designed Westminster, which resembles a subterranean secret base.

However, while some Elizabeth Line stations are impressively vast, they are more understated and strictly functional in their design by comparison, as demonstrated by details like the totems.

There are also the concrete cladded panels, acoustic to deaden sound. They have a design life of 120 years – the same as the tunnels themselves – in part enabled by being perforated with small holes that allow borescope cameras to inspect behind them without requiring removal.

"A lot of it is about housekeeping and a sense of order," explained Maynard. "And that just gives you a feel of calmness. Once you've controlled all this kit and stuff's not scattered everywhere, that just gives this air of simplicity, I suppose."

Farringdon's Elizabeth Line station, which will see around 10,000 people an hour pass through during peak times, was designed by international architecture firm Aedas.

"It's a space really crafted for movement, reflecting the desire lines of people," Aedas' lead on the project, Soji Abass, told Dezeen at an area just below the ticket hall.

He pointed to an artwork on the see-through walls depicting tumbling diamonds in a nod to the nearby Hatton Garden diamond quarter, with lighting highlighting the incessant trundle of the escalators while other functional elements like cameras and speakers have been suppressed.

This concept feeds into a key, newly developed part of the Elizabeth Line's design: the idea of fast spaces and slow spaces.

Warm lighting encourages slower movement

Here and on the escalators, the intention is to move people through at pace.

But in the ticket halls and at platform level, where passengers must make decisions about where to go, additional signage is combined with environmental cues like indirect, warm lighting to encourage gentler and more considered movement.

That is important because the trains are a huge 205-metres long, meaning that if you exit the platform in the wrong direction, you could be several minutes' walk from your desired destination at street level.

Abass explained that the second ticket hall at this station, near the Barbican, is "designed to be an extension of the urban realm" with large corner entrances and flooring made from distinctive City of London paving stones.

Now all it needs is the passengers. After the delays and budget-busting, Transport for London (TfL) and Crossrail want the Elizabeth Line to be perfect.

While walking along the platform, Robinson spotted a new wheelchair access sticker on the floor.

"I don't know why they couldn't put it wholly in one tile," he muttered, stopping to take a photo of the offending item.

As a full-sized railway carved deep underneath the British capital Crossrail is a first of its kind, but some have suggested it may also be the last.

Concerns about the environmental impact of construction in the form of embodied carbon are reaching a clamour, and for a project like the Elizabeth Line the cost is enormous.

TfL has not revealed Crossrail's exact embodied-carbon impact, though it told Dezeen that by replacing older diesel services with modern, energy-efficient trains it anticipates carbon payback will take eight to 13 years.

"You've got to think of the nature of what it is we're doing," said Robinson. "Generally you're only ever going to be doing deep-level tube tunnelling systems in concrete, so you can drive down [the embodied carbon], but you can't necessarily eliminate it."

"But you have to then think that this is all built for a design life of 120 years, it's built with expansion capability so you can put longer trains through without having to extend it," he continued. "So the life of this is not really comparable in the way you often look at embodied carbon within buildings."

He believes we will see another project like Crossrail in London, despite Crossrail 2 being put on hold and the advent of self-driving electric car transit systems like Elon Musk's Tesla tunnels.

"I think we have to because we can't all keep driving around in cars," he said. "I don't see a move away from mass transit systems. If you look across the rest of the world they're getting very busy building more and more of them."

In that case, should the Elizabeth Line be regarded as more of a blueprint for future projects, rather than a standalone achievement?

"I think in many ways, yes," answered Robinson. "I sometimes say that this in itself is one big prototype. The next one will be different, because the technology will have changed, it will have different requirements, but they'll take things from it. It will be the next, next generation."

The photography is courtesy of TfL.

The post Elizabeth Line "more mannered" than Jubilee predecessor says head of architecture appeared first on Dezeen.

British firm Zaha Hadid Architects has begun construction on three new stations for the Dnipro Metro in Ukraine as part of a four-kilometre line extension.

The trio of Zaha Hadid Architects-designed stations — Teatralna, Tsentalna and Muzeina – form part of the metro line extension in the city of Dnipro that first broke ground in 2016.

The stations are set to open in 2025 and will run linearly through the city nearby the Dnieper River.

Once complete, the extended line will connect the city centre, Dnipro-Holovnyi train station, businesses, education and cultural institutions with Dnipro's eastern neighbourhoods.

On ground level, each station will take shape as a visually connected family of sculpted shell pavilions, constructed from recycled steel sourced locally from the city.

Visuals show the entrances to the stations as undulating welded steel forms that rise and arch from newly designed, landscaped public plazas that aim to centre the entrance pavilions as landmarks.

"The city of Dnipro has a long history as a centre of excellence in engineering, metallurgy and manufacturing," said Zaha Hadid Architects.

"These rich traditions are echoed in the welded steel entrance pavilions of the city's new metro stations."

Inside the stations, the ticket halls, metro platforms and corridors will all have a similarly sculptural look.

Stretches of lighting will undulate between and across curved white panelling that covers and arches across the ceilings and walls.

"The design of the ticket halls is unique to each station while the interior concourses, corridors and platforms share a cohesive formal and spatial logic that gives the Dnipro Metro a strong identity," said the practice.

"Defined by concepts of intuitive navigation, the interiors are designed to orientate and direct passengers through each station while enhancing their experience to ensure safe, comfortable and enjoyable transport across the city."

The project forms part of the city's ongoing plans to upgrade its transport systems, while also reducing traffic congestion in its central neighbourhoods.

It will also provide residents and visitors with easy access from the city centre and eastern areas to Dnipro's parks, beaches and leisure facilities along the banks of the river.

Zaha Hadid Architects, now led by Patrik Schumacher, is currently working on several other transport infrastructure projects in the region.

They include a high-speed-train station in Tallinn and the Klenoviy Boulevard Station 2 in Moscow.

Project credits:

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Patrik Schumacher
ZHA project director: Manuela Gatto
ZHA project architect: Yevgeniya Pozigun
ZHA project team: Seungho Yeo, Tommaso Casucci, Mark Winnington, Elena Scripelliti, Federico Borello, Garin O’Aivazian, Veronica Erspamer, Branko Svarcer, Catherine McCann, Evgeniya Yatsyuk, Olga Yatsyuk, Jose Pareja Gomez, Jung Yeon Kwak, Li Jin, Nicolas Turchi, Shajay Bhooshan, Vishu Bhooshan, Aiste Dzikaraite, Veronika Ilinskaya, Houzhe Xu
Client: Dnipro City Council
Contractor: Limak Insaat Sanayi Ve Ticaret A.S. [Turkey]
Structures: Schlaich Bergermann Partner SBP [Stuttgart]
Facade engineering: Eckersley O'Callaghan EOC [London]
Architectural lighting: Office for Visual Interaction Inc. [New York]

The post Zaha Hadid Architects begins construction on Ukrainian metro stations appeared first on Dezeen.

Barcelona-based studio EMBT has revealed images of a mass-timber metro station, which is under construction in the Centro Direzionale area of Naples.

The Naples Underground Central Station is being built in a neighbourhood designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange as part of a major upgrade to the city's infrastructure.

The studio, which is led by Benedetta Tagliabue, chose to build the station from wood to create an organic contrast to 1970s district.

"Kenzo Tange designed Centro Direzionale and he built a very Kenzo Tange-type of city with reflective skyscrapers and a piazza, very 1970s, very clean," Tagliabue told Dezeen. "It didn't work because it's so different from the rest of Naples."

Instead, Tagliabue's design was informed by older parts of Naples.

"It's a place where there are a lot of offices and a lot of business space but at five o'clock at night, it's deserted and very dangerous," she said.

"So the idea of making a new station there and connecting with the new subway line was also to try to introduce a piece of nature and a piece of the original part of Naples into this artificial piece of the city."

The swooping new station is being built on top of existing underground lines, replacing a previous building that was little more than cover for the staircase down to the metro platforms.

"We are working on an existing series of platforms and if you put more weight on top, you never know how much you can put," Tagliabue explained.

"Wood is a very light material, and it combines very well with the pre-existing structures."

"We used the pre-existing concrete structures, the pre-existing columns, and we inserted new wooden columns in that," she added.

"We matched the steel part of the concrete to make the base of the new columns, and then the rest of the column is totally made in wood."

The 10,000 square-metre station's signature shape is formed from glued laminated timber. The width of the rail tracks below is reflected in the width of the undulating vaults.

"We love vaults," Tagliabue said. "It's a great shape that works with most materials – vaults were first made with stone and then with ceramics, and I think it's also efficient with wood."

"Especially laminated, because you can give any shape to the beam that you want," she added.

The vaulted ceilings are also a nod to classic train stations that are often vaulted, while the shape of the station was intended to create the feel of a "walk in the wood".

"In a way what we are trying to achieve here is a kind of a new organic piazza, like being able to walk in a wood when you are in this very artificial business centre," Tagliabue explained.

Centro Direzionale is one of several new metro stations being designed by international architects for the city under the slogan AAA – architecture, art and archaeology – with each station featuring both art and archaeology.

However, the overall project has seen a number of stations delayed due to archaeological finds in the ground, including a design by Studio Fuksas that will now also act as a museum after an ancient Roman temple was found on its site.

The Centro Direzionale station did not have the same problem, as it is in a newer part of town, but construction was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic and Tagliabue says there have been other changes and delays.

"We also had a garden, which now they are trying not to build – budget is always a problem," Tagliabue said. "It's been two years of not building anything because of the coronavirus."

"Naples is not an easy place for maintaining timetables," she added. "I really hope they're not going to cancel the garden, because it's really important and it shows that we're trying to make it into a natural place."

The finished station is also supposed to feature a piece of art on its roof that will depict a face from an archaeological piece found in Pompeii, in a nod to both the art and architecture in the project's slogan.

The exact completion date of the Centro Direzionale station has not yet been announced.

"We started the project in 2004; infrastructure is very slow," she said. "And the Naples way of doing it is not so easy, so you have to be very patient."

"I think because of this station, we won another station in Paris in 2014, 10 years after [the Naples station] and I'm sure the one in Paris will finish before the one in Naples."

Other Naples infrastructure projects designed by well-known architects and designers include a high-speed rail station by Zaha Hadid and another station that was designed as part of the underground project, the University of Naples Metro Station by Karim Rashid.

Photography is by Paolo Fassoli.

Project credits:

Architect: Benedetta Tagliabue, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT
Project director: Joan Callís
Design team leader: Valentina Nicol Noris
Collaborators: Eugenio Cirulli, Marco Orecchia, Gabriela Degetau, Sofia Barberena, Andrea Morandi, Alessandra Deidda, Cecilia Bertozzi, Mirko Silvestri, Joanna Karatzas, Gabriele Rotelli, Guile Amadeu, Lucien Puech, Valeria Alfonsi, Michela Cicuto, Francesca Martinelli, Guido Bigolin, Maira Carillo, Jan Kokol, Andrè Temporelli, Ludwig Godefroy, Shavleg Chichishvili, Gordon Tannhausen, Marco Orecchia, Giulia Viola, Federico Volpi, Teymour Benet, Luis Angello Coarite Asencio, Antonio Rusconi, Davide Mergoni, Francesco Rota, Gregorius Budhijanto, Juan Manuel Peña Sanz, Marco dal Fabbro, Marina Pérez Primo, Raphael Teixeira Libonati, Stefano Spotti, Andrea Morandi, Silvia Sonnati, Carlo Consalvo, Philip Lemanski, Marianna Mincarelli
Structural engineer: MC2 Julio Martínez Calzón

The post Benedetta Tagliabue reveals mass-timber metro station under construction in Naples appeared first on Dezeen.

Global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has unveiled its redesign for the State/Lake Station in downtown Chicago.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is working with construction engineers TranSystems to revamp the station on Chicago's elevated train line, which is nicknamed the L.

The project is being undertaken by the City of Chicago, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Chicago Transit Authority (CTA).

State/Lake Station is Chicago's second busiest stop on the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) network, serving six of the city's eight train lines.

SOM's plans include a large undulating glass canopy that will cover the platforms and the new fly-over connection bridge that will be built over the road.

The canopy, which will be made from fritted glass to prevent bird strikes, will protect passengers from the elements as they board and disembark from the trains.

SOM said that the design of the canopy will reference important pieces of architecture in the city, including the John Hancock Center and the Willis Tower, two skyscrapers in Chicago also designed by the firm.

Elevators connecting the bridge to street level will make the station more accessible to users. The lifts will connect to a new bridge clad in glass and metal that will be built at the western end of the station.

Train platforms will be made wider and the pavements will also be widened at street level to make the station safer for passengers transiting to pedestrian or bus routes through the city.

The design of the State/Lake Station will also preserve sightlines of the nearby Chicago Theatre and other buildings along State Street.

"The new State/Lake station will be a gateway to downtown for Chicagoans and visitors alike," said SOM design partner Scott Duncan.

"As one of the most visible stations in the CTA network, the design is reflective of both its location and the needs of riders, with a soaring glass canopy, comfortable spaces for passengers, and fully integrated accessible design for riders of all mobility levels."

Founded in 1939, SOM has offices all around the world. Recent transit projects from the practice include the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Train Hall in New York and a pair of concourse terminals for the major Chicago O'Hare Airport expansion.

Project credits:

Architect: SOM
Construction engineer: TranSystems
Clients: City of Chicago, Chicago Department of Transportation, Chicago Transit Authority
Local consultant team: HDR, GSG Consultants, Ardmore Roderick, Garza Karhoff Engineering, Legacy Rail Operations, Rider Levett Bucknall, Milhouse Engineering, site design group, Gannett Fleming, Facet Engineering, American Surveying, Metro Strategies

The post SOM reveals plan to add curving glass canopy to Chicago metro station appeared first on Dezeen.

J&A and Sepanta Design have created a series of station interiors based on forms and patterns found in nature for the first unmanned metro line in Chengdu, China.

Designed to provoke emotion among their visitors, the 13 stations feature fluid forms and cellular patterns informed by the local tradition of silk weaving as well as the flora and fauna found in surrounding parks.

The fully‐automatic, 22-kilometre line has been under construction since 2016 and forms an extension to the existing Chengdu Metro system.

Called Line 9, it runs between the southeast and northwest of the Sichuan Province's capital and is the first unmanned metro line in the west of China. Instead of drivers, Chengdu's new trains communicate with each other using the 5G mobile network.

All of the line's 13 stations are designed by Shenzhen firm Jiang & Associates Design (J&A) in collaboration with London-based studio Sepanta Design.

According to the designers, their ambition for the project was to create spaces that would "entirely change people's expectations" of what metro stations could be like.

"Chengdu metro stations are not going to be merely points of transit," said Reza Esmaeeli, founder of Sepanta Design and Design Director at Chetwoods Architects. "They are going to be memorable spaces that offer their passengers an artistic and futuristic expression of their own culture."

The stations' interiors were designed to reflect points of local, cultural interest, with the line passing through the birthplace of Sichuan silk and embroidery culture as well as a number of urban ecological parks.

The designers divided the 13 stations into two categories: feature stations and standard artistic stations.

The four feature stations — Incubation Park, Jincheng Avenue, Cuqiao and Jitouqiao — each have a unique concept, reflecting their local environment.

These themes are explored through distinct colours and materials, alongside bespoke furniture.

At Jincheng Avenue Station, for example, the ticket hall is illuminated by curved, lilac-coloured columns reminiscent of lotus flowers in a nearby lake, while lights that resemble silkworm cocoons are installed across walkway ceilings at Cuqiao Station.

The other nine "standard artistic stations" have a more uniform design, based on an abstract interpretation of embroidery techniques.

These techniques are translated into flowing, continuous lines and patterns made up of interconnecting, cell-like forms, which are repeated across ceilings, walls, floors, columns and furniture.

Chengdu's Line 9 follows in the footsteps of other Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, which introduced driverless metro lines in 2010.

Beijing opened its driverless Yanfan line in 2017, while Taiyuan, the largest city of Shanxi province, opened its first fully automated line just eight days after Chengdu, on 28 December last year.

In Hong Kong, Ponti Design Studio has created a concept for an autonomous, double-decker tram with a radial interior design that encourages a safe return to public transport after the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Photography is by CHAPA.

The post Chengdu reveals "futuristic" stations for its first fully-automated metro line appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch architecture practice UNStudio has collaborated with the Qatar Rail Architecture Department to create 37 stations for the driverless Doha Metro system, which has opened in Qatar.

Consisting of three lines that radiate out from the Msheireb station in the downtown area of Qatar's capital city, the stations on the driverless metro system are united by a design language created by UNStudio and the Qatar Rail Architecture Department.

Aiming to be modern, but reflect the city's history, the stations are all designed to be vaulted spaces.

"It was important that the design represent both modernisation and preservation," UNStudio told Dezeen.

"The challenge was to reference local, traditional architectural heritage, while reinterpreting this into a contemporary design language that represents Qatar today," it continued.

"The vault was chosen as this referential bridge between past and present."

Each of the stations was built from parametrically designed, curved modular elements that can be assembled on a triangular grid so that the structure could be adapted for each station's location, size and capacity.

UNStudio and Qatar Rail Architecture Department outlined the form and arrangement of these modular elements, along with numerous details including interior finishes, layouts, wayfinding and furniture, in an extensive design manual that was then used by the contractors to ensure a consistent design language was maintained across all 37 stations.

"Through the production of a design manual and with the use of adaptive parametric design, it has been possible to create a design with many variants, yet one which maintains a coherent identity throughout all of the stations," said UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel.

"In this way, we can combine local contextual differences within an overall identity and parametrically adapt physical factors such as wayfinding, daylight penetration, passenger flows and constructive elements in a complex but extremely disciplined system."

The modular system was used to create large, open entrance halls for the stations, which was part of the architects' strategy to create welcoming spaces that celebrate public transport.

"The celebration of arriving and departing has always been found in the design of stations," said Van Berkel.

"For the Doha Metro network we devised an adaptive parametric system which creates open, light and welcoming interiors for each of the individual stations. Traditional Qatari architectural features are reinterpreted to incorporate new, transformative qualities which capture daylight and direct this into the interiors, creating uplifting and luminous atmospheres."

Hexagon-shaped tiles that give a multi-coloured mother of pearl-effect were used to clad the structural arched elements to make them distinct from the other surfaces that are clad in more modest materials.

Throughout the network the interiors were slightly adapted to differentiate the three lines in the system, as well as the fourth line that is currently under construction.

"Whilst the structural elements ensure the overall consistency of the network, the system also enables variety, as this is also necessary for the branding of the individual lines and the identity of the individual stations." said UNStudio.

"The identities of the different metro lines are achieved by varying the materials, colours and details, while the station identities focus on different content that relates to their specific locations."

Externally the parametrically-designed arched forms create distinctive structures that will allow travellers to easily identify and find the stations.

"These were roadside inns along ancient trade routes, where travelers, or 'caravaners', stopped off along their journeys," said UNStudio.

"The Doha Metro stations were designed to reference this idea of creating a place, rather than merely a highly efficient node."

"We are going to move differently in the future," added Van Berkel.

"Mobility is changing fast, from the introduction of autonomous vehicles to urban cable cars and the Hyperloop. The mobility hubs of the future have to respond to and cater to these changes," he continued.

"In order to encourage the use of more sustainable forms of transport, these stations not only have to ensure smooth passenger flows, but they need to truly appeal to the public; to be places they want to visit and return to."

The Doha Metro system has been built ahead of the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Many of the stations will be used by spectators during the tournament including the Lusail station next to Lusail Stadium, which is being designed by Foster + Partners and Education City station, which is close to the Fenwick-Iribarren Architects and Pattern Design's Education City Stadium.

Photography is by Hufton and Crow.

Project credits:

UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, with Arjan Dingsté, Nuno Almeida, Marianthi Tatari and René Rijkers, Jaap-Willem Kleijwegt, Tom Minderhoud, Maurizio Papa, Juergen Heinzel, Rob Henderson, Ariane Stracke, and Wael Batal, Thomas van Bekhoven, Ergin Birinci, William de Boer, Sean Buttigieg, Rodrigo Cañizares, Eric Caspers, Konstantinos Chrysos, Marc Hoppermann, Sebastian Janusz, Nemanja Kordić, Dennis Krassenburg, Samuel Liew, Guomin Lin, Chiara Marchionni, Alberto Martinez, Gerben Modderman, Martin Neumann, Patrik Noome, Kristoph Nowak, Bruno Peris, Marcos Polydorou, Clare Porter, Attilio Ranieri, Stefano Rocchetti, Thys Schreij, Georgios Siokas, Luke Tan, Yi-Ju Tseng, Menno Trautwein, Gerasimos Vamvakidis, Laertis Vassiliou, Sander Versluis, Philip Wilck, JooYoun Yoon, Martin Zangerl, Shuang Zhang, Meng Zhao, Jennifer Zitner, Seyavash Zohoori.
Structure, MEP: RHDHV
Lighting engineering: AG Licht
Wayfinding: Mijksenaar
Passenger flow analysis: MIC – Mobility in Chain

Facade engineering: Inhabit
Acoustic engineering: Arup
Fire and life safety: AECOM
Technical landscape advice: AECOM

The post UNStudio creates 37 vaulted stations for Doha Metro appeared first on Dezeen.

UK studio Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled its design for the Klenoviy Boulevard Station 2, which is being built in the south of Moscow as part of the expansion of the city's metro system.

The station in the Nagatinsky Zaton district forms part of Moscow's new Bolshaya Koltsevaya Line, which translates as Large Circle Line, that is currently under construction.

Set to be built at the intersection of Klenoviy Boulevard and Kolomenskaya Street in the south of the city near the Moscow River, the station will serve as an interchange between the Bolshaya Koltsevaya Line and the planned Biryulevskaya Line.

The station is also position to provide access to the riverside Kolomenskoye park, which contains several palaces and a UNESCO World Heritage-listed church.

Visuals released by Zaha Hadid Architects show two above-ground pavilions that will provide access to the ticket halls and platforms below ground.

Each of the pavilions has a roof that rises up from the stairs to cover the buildings. Glass walls will enclose the metro station entrances.

Within the station, a series of columns will be used to help direct traffic, while columns along the platform edge will be spaced to communicate where the centre of the platform is.

"A series of columns on the station's platforms are shaped to express instances of the same form being marginally distorted as it moves through space, with each column being a slight variation in the form to signify its distance from the centre of the platform," said the studio.

"The columns are developed as 'arrows' that direct passengers and also integrate lines of light on the ceiling and the floors to provide way-finding, functional lighting and signify platform edges."

A system of linear lighting will be used to help direct passengers with lighting conditions adjusted to warn passengers of the arrival of a train.

"Providing intuitive navigation throughout, the design incorporates new innovations in lighting and passenger information systems to define the next generation of stations on Moscow's renowned metro system," added the studio.

Zaha Hadid Architects is one of the world's best-known architecture studios. Founded by the late Zaha Hadid in 1980 the studio is now lead by Patrik Schumacher.

Recent transport projects from the studio include a high-speed train station in Tallinn, and a collaboration with A-Lab to design two stations on Oslo's new metro line.

Project credits:

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
ZHA design director: Christos Passas
ZHA Team: Anna Uborevic-Borovskaya, Mihai-Dragos Potra, Alex Turner, Liudmila Harrison-Jones
Consortium members: Systematica, Krost, Metropolis Group, Rider Levett Bucknall
Lighting design: Arup Lighting (Giulio Antonutto, Pavlina Akritas)

The post Zaha Hadid Architects reveals design of Moscow metro station appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture studio Cobe and engineering firm Arup have designed the elevated Orienktaj and underground Nordhavn Metro stations as part of a docklands development in Copenhagen.

Both stations form part of the redevelopment of a large area of docks to the north of Copenhagen to create 40,000 homes and office space for 40,000 people, which is being masterplanned by Cobe.

The elevated Orienktaj station is designed to be a landmark structure within the development.

"The Orientkaj station was designed as an elevated metro station, creating a striking experience for passengers arriving from the underground metro, with views over the Orientkaj dock and the water," said Cobe founder Dan Stubbergaard.

"The idea was for the station to become a local meeting point for residents and visitors, sort of a destination in its own right: the station gives the Nordhavn area both energy and cohesion," he told Dezeen.

The elevated station is supported on a central concrete column and two triangular concrete supports that continue around the station's platforms to enclose the raised building.

Described by Cobe as "concrete claws", these forms and the aluminium platform building were derived from its location in the working harbour and the cranes and shipping containers that can be found nearby .

"Orientkaj station celebrates the industrial architecture of the harbour," said Stubbergaard. "The station outline is a large, bold and simple silhouette evoking the cranes, containers and warehouses you see in the docklands."

"The harbour is also drawn out by the use of materials, such as concrete and anodised aluminium panels across the facades, roof and soffits – the pleated cladding also mirrors the unique quality of seaside light and the water itself," he continued.

Two concrete stairs lead to the platform building, which is located between the tracks. Glass walls and doors were designed to give passengers views across the surrounding docklands, while the roof is made up of numerous skylights.

"Inside the station, the skylights also mirror the triangular shed roofs of industrial buildings, and flood the station with horizontal light - fairly unique for a metro station," added Stubbergaard.

The second station is underground and shares some characteristics with the elevated station and the wider network that it connects to.

"Each station was designed to respond to its unique local context, to better serve the people and the neighbourhoods it connects," said Arup’s lead architect, Kristian Winther.

"The design of each station is fundamentally unique and yet they both share the same metro design language: they are designed from a passenger's perspective, rather than that of the train; and they also both respond to their local urban context."

While the overground station is predominantly grey and white, in the underground station red is widely used, in line with the wider Metro's colour scheme.

"The overground Orientkaj station responds to its harbour side location: it is a white station that responds to the surrounding neigbourhood of the growing Nordhavn development, known as the white city," he continued.

"The underground Nordhavn station follows the design approach of the Cityringen metro line, with the red cladding signalling a transfer station."

The design of both buildings aimed to put wayfinding first, but also incorporate playful elements.

"The transfer corridor in Nordhavn station is clad in pleated ceramic panels that change colour to reveal different hues as passengers move through," said Winther.

"In Orientkaj station, the pleated aluminium cladding reflect and amplifies the unique, horizontal quality of the harbourside light and the water."

The stations form part of the redevelopment of the Nordhavn area of Copenhagen, with the metro line expected to be extended to form a loop around the development. A further five stations are planned with Orientkaj designed as the prototype for the group.

"Copenhagen's metro authority, Metroselskabet, asked us to design Orientkaj station as a prototype for any future stations along the Nordhavn metro line: the logic of the station outline would remain the same, while elements such as the staircases and lifts can be configured to best suit each site," added Stubbergaard.

Copenhagen-based architecture studio Cobe has built numerous structures in the city including the Red Cross Volunteer House, the wedge-shaped Tingbjerg Library and Culture House and an apartment block in a former grain silo, which is located near the Orienktaj station.

Photography is by Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST.

Project credits:

Client: Metroselskabet
Architects: Arup and Cobe
Architectural finishes: CAS JV
Engineers: RambøllArup JV
Contractor: Metnord
Lighting design: Arup
Landscape architects: Cobe, Sleth and Polyform

The post Cobe and Arup unveil elevated Metro station in Copenhagen docklands appeared first on Dezeen.

The Soviet Metro Stations photography series by Christopher Herwig documents the most unusual details of the Soviet-era metro network built between the 1930s and 1980s.

Intended to give an insight into the "closest realisation of a Soviet utopia", the photography collection features stations in 15 cities across seven different countries in the former USSR – the communist state that existed from 1922 to 1991.

Herwig's photos focus predominantly on the details that make each of these stations unique, which range from propaganda sculptures and artwork to elaborate mosaics and opulent lighting.

"I was first blown away by the metro's station on trips to Moscow, St Petersburg and Tashkent starting in the late 90s," Herwig told Dezeen.

"They are pretty amazing – for me it became an event in itself to visit the stations and explore them, just like one would go to a museum or forest. I spent months."

The photos are featured in Herwig's latest book Soviet Metro Stations, which has been published by FUEL. It is complete with an introductory text by Dezeen columnist and critic Owen Hatherly.

It follows his first book Soviet Bus Stops, which documented bus stops in Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.

Herwig's photography gives an insight into the array of political influences and architectural styles seen during the Soviet era.

This includes stations with a stripped-back Constructivist aesthetic through to excessively complicated Byzantine designs and elaborate Stalinist styles undertaken under Joseph Stalin's rule.

All the photos were taken early in the morning and late at night to limit the number of people in each shot.

While providing the images with an eerily quiet feel, this is intended to help retain focus on the architecture each station.

"I picked the ones that would tell a more complete story of the metros. I visited all the ones designed and for the most part built during the Soviet Union – the Dnipro stations were only completed a couple years after the fall of the USSR," Herwig explained.

"For me the true strength of the stations lie in the fact that often each one was unique not only in its overall appearance but right down to the type on the signs and lights on the ceiling and tiles on the walls."

Herwig's focus for the series had initially been the "over the top, palatial metros in Moscow and St.Petersburg" of Stalin's rule that are dominated by classical columns and marble, as they stray so far from the stations with which people are familiar today.

However, throughout his study of the structures he came to be more interested in the minimal, modernist structures of the Constructivist era that were built "with much humbler budgets" in the years following Stalin.

"While the classical stations seemed to look to copy the imperial past, their counterparts to me seem to dream more of a hopeful future and strive to create something never seen before," said Herwig.

Other photography series that document Soviet-era architecture include Jan Kempenaers black and white photos of war memorials and Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego's series in Georgia.

The post Christopher Herwig photographs opulent details of Soviet-era metro stations appeared first on Dezeen.

Two stations inspired by glacial landscapes are being designed by architecture studios Zaha Hadid Architects and A-Lab for a new metro line in the Norwegian capital.

The Fornebubanen metro line will be a five-mile sub-surface route connecting a new neighbourhood on Oslo's Fornebu peninsula with the city centre.

London-based Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and Oslo-based A-Lab have won a competition to design two of the six stations along the line.

The two studios reference Norway's glacier-carved landscape in their designs for the new Fornbuporten and Fornebu Senter stations.

Canyon-like forms will be carved to guide the flow of people in and out of the Fornebu Senter station, in shapes reminiscent of mountains and fjords. At street level public plazas will gradually meld into the entryways.

Meanwhile Fornbuporten will feature a pair of entrance pavilions, positioned beside public spaces on both sides of the station. Both will feature reflective surfaces, designed to cast a spectrum of light across their surroundings.

The northern entrance will feature a orthogonal-shaped pavilion and plaza, while the southern end will comprise an oval canopy set in a park.

Lighting inside the metro stations will change according to the time of day, in order to "enhance passengers' well-being".

Oslo's population has grown to almost a million, but urban expansion is curtailed by the protected habitats and natural geographies of Oslofjord to the south and the surrounding mountains and forests.

The new Fornebu urban centre is being creating on the site of a decommissioned airport, providing 6,000 homes. The Fornebubanen metro line will connect this area with the Majorstuen interchange in just 12 minutes.

"The Fornebubanen will be a vital new transport link for the city," said Gianluca Racana, director of Zaha Hadid Architects.

"People have been waiting for the Fornebubanen for a long time," added Geir Haaversen, founder of A-Lab. "The design of these stations will be crucial for the development of their locations."

Other new buildings being created on the peninsula include New Aquarium, a project by London studio Haptic featuring an undulating roof dome.

Haptic is also working on the design of a sustainable new airport for the city, in collaboration with Nordic Office of Architecture. Billed as "the largest airport in the world", it is scheduled to complete in 2020.

Construction will begin on the Fornebubanen metro line in 2020, with completion due by 2025.

Project credits:

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA)
ZHA directors: Patrik Schumacher, Gianluca Racana
ZHA project directors: Ludovico Lombardi, Daniel Fiser
ZHA design team (Fornabu Senter station): Davide Del Giudice, Roberto Vangeli, Kate Revyakina, Pauline Gidoin
ZHA design team (Fornbuporten station): Michael Rogers, Roberto Vangeli, Shahd Abdelmoneim, Marko Gligorov, Sofia Amodio
Local architect: A-Lab
A-Lab director: Geir Haaversen
A-Lab design team: Christopher James, Laurence Antelme, Jonas Albæk Christensen
Lighting consultant (Fornbuporten station): Jason Bruges Studio
Structural engineering (Fornabu Senter station): BuroHappold Engineering

The post Zaha Hadid Architects and A-Lab to design stations on Oslo's new metro line appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture firm Grimshaw's station that will connect Los Angeles International Airport to the city's light rail network is shown in these new renderings.

Scheduled to open in 2023, the $500 million (£390 million) Airport Metro Connector (AMC) transit hub will connect LAX to the public transport system, as part of the car-centric city's wider transit improvements.

"The Airport Metro Connector will play a vital role in reducing dependence on the private vehicle to access the often-congested LAX airport," said Grimshaw principal Andrew Byrne in a statement.

The global architecture studio is acting as the project's lead design architect, with local firm Gruen Associates as architect of record.

The AMC will link the Metro system's Crenshaw/LAX Line, which is currently under construction across the southwest of the city, with the extended Green Line.

The station will eventually connect to an elevated electric Automated People Mover (AMP) operated by the airport, which will shuttle passengers to and from the terminals.

Currently, a free shuttle bus is provided between LAX and the Green Line's Aviation LAX station.

Byrne believes the station will be a "transformative addition to LA's mobility landscape that will make it easier to arrive and depart the airport, and to navigate the surrounding neighbourhoods, no matter what your mode of transit".

Bicycle parking, a bus plaza and a vehicle drop-off are also planned for the 9.5-acre (3.8-hectare) AMC site, located at the corner of Arbor Vitae Street and Aviation Boulevard.

Recently updated renderings show white and glass buildings filled with natural light inside. Wide concourses will be located above ground, providing access to the various transit options on different levels.

"The AMC is uniquely designed to include elegant skylights, swooping canopies, and glazed screens creating a lightweight spacious environment for travellers to connect easily to where they need to go," said Grimshaw's statement.

Landscaping will surround the site, and form a public space between canopies that extend from the main buildings to form shelters beside bus parking.

Solar panels also appear in the images, hinting that they will be used to help power the transit hub.

Grimshaw has plenty of experience designing stations and transport infrastructure. The firm recently completed the overhaul of London Bridge railway station, and a metro stop in Toronto.

It is also currently working on ambitious plans for New York's JFK and Newark airports, as well as the HS2 stations in the UK.

Images are by Grimshaw Architects. Video is by Kilograph and Grimshaw.

The post Grimshaw's Airport Metro Connector will link LAX directly to public transport appeared first on Dezeen.

Benthem Crouwel Architects has designed seven new metro stations for the new Noord/Zuidlijn line through Amsterdam, which opened this week.

Amsterdammers and tourists alike can now traverse the six mile north-south route through the city in just 15 minutes, 22 years after the project began.

Dutch architecture firm Benthem Crouwel Architects has designed seven stations for the route, two above ground and five below.

Design work began on Station Noord, Station Noorderpark, Centraal Station, Station Rokin, Station Vijzelgracht, Station De Pijp, and Station Europaplein in 1996, with construction starting in 2003.

Benthem Crouwel Architects said they created the stations as a "new public layer" for the city, mirroring the canals and streets that traverse it at surface level.

Station entrances have been left uncovered, with escalators leading directly to entrance halls that in turn have direct views of the track to create a sense of continuous public space.

All the stations have been designed to be distinctive, but are all unified by plans that make it as easy and fast as possible to travel from street level to train carriage.

The architects originally won the contract back in 1995 with plans that created paths to platforms like underground streets, rather than labyrinthine passages.

In order to help maintain each of the stations' appearances the materials used throughout were chosen to being easy to clean and replace.

Clear materials were installed and deliberate lighting choices made to ensure the stations are well lit and feel safe to use.

Constructing the new underground train line 25 metres deep in Amsterdam's boggy soil provided plenty of construction challenges. When the city was founded in 1300 it was on reclaimed land, and houses were built on stilts.

Advances in boring technology made in the past few decades made tunnelling deep under the city without disturbing the unstable soil possible.

At the new Station Rokin 700,000 artefacts that were discovered during the process of excavating the tunnels have been displayed in a large glass case between the escalators.

In Sydney, Foster + Partners has won the contract to design seven new stations for the metro line currently being excavated under the harbour, and in Paris BIG has designed a new looping station for the metro.

London is currently waiting for the opening of its new underground railway line Crossrail, which will run from east to west under the whole city.

Photos by Jannes Linders.

Project credits:

Architect: Benthem Crouwel Architect
Client: Municipality of Amsterdam
Project team: Jan Benthem, Mels Crouwel, Joost Vos, Marten Wassmann, Saartje van der Made, Pascal Cornips, Daniel Jongtien, Peter Alberts, Saskia Andringa, Joop van de Beek, Aad van Berkel, Sergio Bostdorp, Jurriaan de Bruijn, Jasper Bus, Frank Deltrap, Marleen van Driel, Amir Farokhian, Bregje de Groot, Willem Jan van der Gugten, Michael Jaggoe, Jeroen Jonk, Leonardo Kappel, Klary Koopmans, Lucas Kukler, Volker Krenz, Jerome Latteux, Ton Liemburg, Mahyar Nikkhoy, Joost van Noort, Bas den Older, Bart Polman, Roy van Rijk, Pieter Rijpstra, Henk van Rossum, Andries Ruizendaal, Philip Rutten, Job Schroën, André Staalenhoef, Maurice van der Steen, Ronno Stegeman, Jan-Dirk Valewink, Nico de Waard, Carel Weber, Jos Wesselman, Heymen Westerveld, Joep Windhausen, Cees Zuidervaart
Engineer: Adviesbureau Noord/Zuidlijn (IBA, Witteveen+Bos, Royal HaskoningDHV)
Contractor: Structural work by Max Bogl, Dura Vermeer, Heijmans. Completion by VIA Noord/Zuidlijn (Visser & Smit Bouw (VolkerWessels)
Light design: Benthem Crouwel Architects together with Bartenbach

The post Amsterdam opens new metro line with seven stations by Benthem Crouwel Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Grimshaw Architects has completed the latest station for the expanded Toronto subway system, with a huge curved roof that swoops down to form walls and is covered in mirrors underneath.

Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) Station acts as the new terminus of the Toronto Transit Commission's 1 train line, which was recently extended north.

Designed by global firm Grimshaw, in collaboration with consultants Arup and architect of record Adamson Associates, VMC has an elliptical ground plan.

Its shell-like roof curves down to the ground on the long sides, while glass windows fill the gaps at each end – where the entrances are found.

For the interior, Grimshaw also partnered with Canadian firm Paul Raff Studio to create a metallic ceiling installation.

The concave surface is lined with thousands of square-shaped mirrored panels that redirect both natural and artificial light around the space, and to the platforms below.

"We wanted to bring daylight down into the box for wayfinding and passenger experience," said Juan Porral, a partner at Grimshaw.

An X-shaped bridge at street level allows glimpses down into the platform, and connects the building's four corners.

Safety was also a key concern. The station has clear sight lines, with walking routes to stairs and gates easily visible. They are clearly mapped to eliminate bottlenecks during rush-hour commuting.

"Beyond convenience and ease of use, the geometry and transparency create a safer, more secure transit environment," said a statement from Grimshaw.

The Toronto York-Spadina Subway Extension of Line 1, created to provide commuter access from the city suburb of Vaughan to Downtown Toronto and beyond.

British architect Will Alsop has also recently designed two colourful metro stations for the expanded subway system, for the Pioneer Village and Finch West neighbourhoods.

Development is also expected along the line, and around VCM, spaces have been earmarked for future retail projects.

The station's adaptable features include panels around the perimeter that can be knocked down, to open up the building at different locations and connect it to others in future.

"Grimshaw was challenged to imagine a new city around the station and create an iconic head house that would become a focal point and organising element," said the firm's statement.

Grimshaw was founded by architect Nicholas Grimshaw in London in 1980, and has since opened offices around the world.

Other recent projects by the firm include an ecological park in China with a massive indoor water fountain, an office tower with three interlinking sections in Sydney, and a glass-encased student centre for Duke University in North Carolina.

Photography by is Shai Gil.

The post Grimshaw creates curved mirrored ceiling inside Toronto metro station appeared first on Dezeen.

British architect Will Alsop has created metro stations in Toronto's Pioneer Village and Finch West neighbourhoods, as part of an initiative to create more public transit options in the wider metropolitan area.

The two stations form part of the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension Project, which extends Toronto's subway system through to York, a suburban district of the city. Both stations are located on the outskirts of the city.

Built on otherwise underdeveloped lots,"Built on otherwise underdeveloped lots, the structures were designed by The Spadina Group Associates (TSGA), a joint venture between IBI Group, LEA Consulting Ltd and WSP, in collaboration with Alsop and his firm All Design.

Both are distinguished by their cantilevered roofs, polished concrete interior walls, and pops of colour throughout.

Black and white stripes cover the exterior of Finch West, with a large red window on the second storey of its entrance. Pioneer Village contrasts with its rust-toned palette and is clad in weathered steel, with an enormous geometric canopy roof on one portion.

"The subway station entrances were designed as a pair of sculptural structures; their height exceeding that necessary, to increase their visibility," said a statement from Alsop.

At Finch West, the two-storey building is surrounded by geometric concrete pillars, representative of art deco designs. Exterior black-and-white stripes are replicated inside on the ceiling and along floors down inside the metro platform.

Orange, fuchsia and lime-green windows define the ground-floor entrance. Pops of blue, green and red feature alongside the polished concrete metro platforms.

Pioneer Village, in contrast, is covered in weathering steel. A huge cantilevered roof creates a covered space for two regional bus terminals, and is topped with planted with meadow grasses. The station is located on the border of York, and anchors a corner lot of York University.

Inside are polished concrete walls, similar to those Finch West, with angled supporting columns down in the platforms. A suspended array of 40 light designs by Berlin studio Realities:united run along the ceiling, and display text-based messages sent from passengers.

Alsop's equally bold Ontario College of Art and Design is located closer to Downtown Toronto, and received the first RIBA Worldwide Award in 2004.

His colourful Peckham Library in London also won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2000.

Photography is by Wade Zimmerman.

Project credits:

Civil/structural engineering: LEA Consulting
Structural engineering: WSP (Halsall Associates)
Mechanical engineering: HH Angus & Associates
Landscape design: Janet Rosenberg & Studio

The post Will Alsop designs two colourful metro stations for Toronto's expanded subway appeared first on Dezeen.

California architecture firm Brooks + Scarpa has wrapped a Seattle transit facility in an undulated, blue aluminium screen that was influenced by a dance performance.

The Angle Lake Transit Station and Plaza is located on a seven-acre (2.8-hectare) site in the city's SeaTac neighbourhood. It serves as a stop along an elevated light rail line that connects the Seattle airport to the downtown district and the University of Washington.

The seven-storey concrete structure is wrapped in an undulating screen made of over 7,500 blue-anodised aluminium panels.

"Using ruled surface geometry, the undulating facade is formed by connecting two curves with a series of straight lines to form the surface," said Brooks + Scarpa, a firm with offices in Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The screen's design was influenced by dance choreographer William Forsythe, who is known for using technology and mathematics to create avant-garde performances.

"Inspired by William Forsythe's improvisational piece Dance Geometry – where dancers connect their bodies by matching lines in space that could be bent, tossed or otherwise distorted – we began to think of the possibilities where simple straight lines are composed to produce an infinite number of movements and positions with little need for transition," the team said.

"This idea lessens the need to think about the end result and focus more on discovering new ways of movement and transformations."

The team used standardised sizes for the custom-made metal panels, in order to maximise efficiency during fabrication and installation. The facade was installed in under three weeks without the use of cranes or special equipment.

In total, the transit station encompasses 400,000 square feet (37,161 square metres). Occupying a sloped site, the building has five levels above ground and two partially below grade. The facility contains bicycle storage, lockers, retail space, parking and charging stations for electric vehicles.

A public plaza on the third level connects to the light rail stop and features a passenger drop-off area, seating, regionally inspired artwork and native plantings. The plaza is also designed to accommodate community events, such as festivals and farmers' markets.

The building has a number of sustainable elements and has earned LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council.

"The design and location of major project elements maximise function, sustainability and aesthetics while providing an efficient use of space," Brooks + Scarpa said.

The firm won the commission through an international competition. Its other recently completed projects include a Utah museum with "canyon-like" roof tops and a housing project in Los Angeles for homeless and disabled veterans.

Photography is by Benjamin Benschneider and Brooks + Scarpa.

The post Brooks + Scarpa drapes wavy metal screen over Seattle transit station appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture collective Assemble and artist Matthew Raw have refurbished the entrance to Seven Sisters Underground station in London, covering it in thousands of colourful handmade tiles.

Named Clay Station, the refurbishment commissioned by Art on the Underground focused on a retail unit at the entrance of Seven Sisters that had lain empty for more than a decade.

Inspired by the countless different tile designs which are used across the London Underground network, Turner prize-winning studio Assemble worked with artist Matthew Raw to clad the retail unit in handmade tiles.

During the construction process, a kiln was set up in the space so that tiles could be made on site while also facilitating a series of workshops where local residents and community groups were able to learn the techniques to create small ceramic objects.

Through a similar process to the one used by Assemble to create its Splatware ceramics series, the new tiles were made from blocks of plain white clay coloured with body stain.

The multicoloured clay was then sized, rolled, moulded, cut, dried, fired and glazed to create more than a thousand handmade tiles, each one with a unique design.

The resulting tiles were used to clad the exterior of the building. Green and blue marble tiles cover the columns, skirt and roof, while predominantly yellow tiles wrap the walls and chimney.

"The colourful approach we decided upon came from an extended period of experimentation in the studio," said Matthew Raw, a Royal College of Art graduate who specialises in working with clay. "As a result, each tile is a bespoke composition of different clay mixtures."

"It has been great to work with Assemble and bounce off different skill sets. During production, it quickly became apparent that cladding the kiosk with this approach was going to be a labour of love, as each element is rolled and then glazed by hand."

In addition, Art on the Underground collaborated with organisations A New Direction and Create Jobs to establish two traineeships as part of the project, which provided the opportunity for locals to partake in clay induction training.

Funded by Arts Council England, the training was followed by hands-on making experience with Matthew Raw and members of Assemble.

The designers hope that while building on London Underground's rich heritage of ceramics, it will also challenge bad building practice in the city – encouraging developers to place focus on care and craft.

"Our collaboration with Matthew Raw for this Art on the Underground commission has been a great opportunity to experiment with architectural ceramics techniques and designs, something which has a rich history when it comes to the space of the underground," said Assemble.

"We were interested in the impact that a small corner building could have if it was brought back in to use after having lain empty for ten years and was treated with an extraordinary amount of care," they added.

"With this new commission at Seven Sisters Underground station, we engaged with the community to restore a sense of conviviality in the area, supported by developing new skills through workshops for local residents."

"It is also an opportunity to enrich passengers' journeys by focusing on a different type of building design to what they might see in their everyday commute," she added.

Photography is by GG Archard.

The post Assemble covers entrance to London tube station in colourful handmade tiles appeared first on Dezeen.

Will Scott's Architecture of the Underground photo series showcases the diverse designs of London's Tube stations, from the art deco of Arnos Grove to the high-tech of Canary Wharf.

Scott, who splits his time between London and Edinburgh, had the idea for the images after he made a chance visit to Arnos Grove station two years ago, and became fascinated by the building's design.

The photographer soon realised he had seen very little of the London Underground network, and that many stations are largely undocumented.

"Many Londoners don't really have any appreciation of how incredible a design and engineering feat the underground network is," he told Dezeen.

"When you're commuting every day, it's easy to just think about it as a tool that gets you to and from work."

Scott worked his way along one tube line at a time, hoping to capture stations from a variety of eras and architectural styles.

He tried to time each shoot with a sunny day, to ensure the buildings looked at their best. He used a Canon 5DS camera with a 24-millimetre tilt-shift lens, to capture as much as possible in each shot.

Farringdon, which first opened in 1863, features white tiling on its facade and a green marble band running around its base, while a cavernous concrete and steel hall lies at the centre of Canada Water, a more contemporary station built by Buro Happold in 1999.

Scott's photos also show the arched glass entrance to Canary Wharf station, constructed by Foster + Partners in the same year.

The photographer made a point of venturing to the peripheral tube stops that sit far outside of London's centre, taking particular interest in the buildings designed by Charles Holden at the northern end of the Piccadilly line.

Among these is Southgate, which is topped by a flattened, cylindrical roof, and Cockfosters, which is illuminated by slanted windows and globular lights suspended from the ceiling.

"I'm really hoping to show some of the lesser known stations off, as many of them were groundbreaking for their time," Scott explained.

The photo series also hones in on the design details both inside and outside the stations, such as the typography used for signage and the tiled illustrations applied to platform walls.

"I love the level of detail that went into both the individual stations and the overall network, it was an incredible labour of love," said Scott.

Will Scott uses film as well as photography to document his interest in the built environment, posting his latest findings on Instagram.

He is not the first photographer to take an interest in railway stations and networks. Alastair Philip Wiper documented construction of Copenhagen's new metro line, while Christopher Forsyth embarked on a project to document all of Montreal's metro stations.

The post Photographer Will Scott celebrates the varied architecture of London Underground stations appeared first on Dezeen.

French artist Daniel Buren has unveiled the final part of a permanent installation at London's Tottenham Court Road station, which sees the walls of the ticket hall covered in colourful shapes and monochrome stripes.

The installation, named Diamonds and Circles, was commissioned as part of the major overhaul of the busy London Underground station, which is located at the intersection of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

Work on the installation has been ongoing, but the last section – a sculpture baring the same motifs as the walls and displayed in a 2.4 metre-high glass cabinet – has now completed. The installation is Buren's first permanent public artwork in the UK.

"A public work is interesting for me because you can develop the place, the people who use the space, and connections between all of these things. Museums attract only a portion of the population," said the artist.

"The public in the tube station is everyone, and there is a constant flux of people running both ways. I want to offer them a beautiful bubble of oxygen for the spirit."

Brightly coloured diamonds and circles set on a black and white stripy background pattern the glass-tiled walls of the station.

The installation joins mosaics by Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi, which were added to the station in 1984 but removed for a period of time in 2015.

Transport for London (TfL) faced criticism about the removal of the mosaics at the time – prompting a campaign spearheaded by the Twentieth Century Society (C20), that saw over 8,000 members of the public sign a petition to have them reinstated.

TfL now says that 95 per cent of the artist's original design has been put back on public view, and the sections of the artwork that could not be relocated at Tottenham Court Road were sent to Edinburgh College of Art where Eduardo Paolozzi studied in 1943 and later became a professor.

"London Underground has developed an expertise in mosaic conservation which will enable it to do a great job on future station renovations and show other owners across the capital what can be achieved," said C20 director Catherine Croft in a statement at the time.

"Whilst we would have liked to see the whole art work kept intact, we congratulate Transport for London on the repairs and cleaning that have made using the station a very special experience for busy shoppers and commuters."

Buren, born 1938, has become well-known for his use of contrasting coloured stripes and often creates site-specific works inside iconic architectural spaces.Recently, he covered the glass sails of Frank Gehry's Fondation Louis Vuitton building in Paris with an array of multicoloured filters, and previously decorated the rooftop of Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse.

The post Daniel Buren adds colourful shapes to Tottenham Court Road tube station appeared first on Dezeen.

Foster + Partners has won a competition to create a chain of seven stations along an extension of the Sydney Metro, which will tunnel beneath the city's harbour.

Norman Foster's London-based practice will design stations at Crows Nest, Victoria Cross, Martin Place, Pitt Street, Waterloo and Barangaroo – where fellow London architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has just completed a trio of skyscrapers.

The stations will extend the Sydney Metro northwest, under Sydney Harbour and past the Jørn Utzon-designed Opera House to the city's central business district.

It is part of a wider overhaul of the city's transport system, which will see 66 kilometres of track added by 2024.

"Sydney Metro is Australia's biggest transport project – 31 stations and 66 kilometres of new metro rail for Australia's biggest city," said a spokesperson for Transport for NSW. "It includes the delivery of seven new metro stations across North Sydney and the Sydney CBD."

Foster + Partners has teamed up with consultants Arcadis, Mott McDonald, WT Partnership and McKenzie Group Consulting, as well as engineers Robert Bird Group and architects Architectus for the project.

Construction work is expected to begin on the stations in early 2021. It will complete the following year, in time for the line to become fully operational by 2024.

Foster + Partners and its figurehead Norman Foster ranked highly in the inaugural Dezeen Hot List, as the 10th most read-about architects last year.

The firm is currently working on an array of projects across the globe, including a tower complex at Mecca, a monkey enclosure at London Zoo and Apple's Californian campus, which is expected to open next month.

The post Foster + Partners to design seven new stations for Sydney Metro appeared first on Dezeen.

The Twentieth Century Society is calling for a heritage listing to be applied to Foster + Partners' North Greenwich Interchange, which is threatened with demolition by Santiago Calatrava's recently unveiled £1 billion development.

The UK heritage body submitted a Grade II* listing application for the North Greenwich Interchange by Foster + Partners and the North Greenwich Underground Station by Alsop, Lyall & Stormer at at the end of 2016.

The application coincided with Greenwich council's decision to grant outline planning permission to developers Knight Dragon for the redevelopment of the peninsula – including a £1 billion complex by Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava on the site of the existing station and interchange.

Successful listing of the London tube station and interchange could curtail plans for Calatrava's scheme, while its rejection would spell demolition for one if not both.

The tube station and canopy above were created as part of the Jubilee Line extension in 1998-9. The Twentieth Century Society describes the structures as "outstanding" examples of architecture.

"Our application was not in response to shortcomings of the newly proposed scheme, but because we would deeply regret the loss of two recent and outstanding examples of late-20th-century infrastructure buildings," the society's conservation adviser Tess Pinto told Dezeen.

"We think they would warrant retention in any redevelopment of the peninsula."

Foster's 12-metre high canopy spans 160 metres across the station, supported by a network of branching columns. The crescent-shaped plane has one wavy edge, and shelters the station's entrance, bus stops and taxi drop-off points.

Built on the site of a former gasworks, the transport hub improved access to the peninsula, paving the way for Richard Rogers' Millennium Dome next door.

"North Greenwich Interchange is a superb example of very late-20th-century transport infrastructure and is of exceptional architectural, historic and engineering interest," reads the listing application.

"It helped to transform ideas of what a transport interchange can be. Reflecting the best of modern technology and design, North Greenwich Underground Station and North Greenwich Interchange both fully meet the standard for listing at Grade II*."

"The station made the Dome possible and thereby became one of the busiest stations in London."

Calatrava's Peninsula Palace would see the station rebuilt, and topped by a performance venue, winter gardens and a crown-like arrangement of towers containing apartments, a hotel and office. A bridge encased in latticework link the development to the nearby water front.

The project forms part of a wider redevelopment of the Greenwich Peninsula by developers Knight Dragon. Masterplanned by British practice Allies and Morrison, it is to include 15,000 new homes, as well as schools and healthcare facilities.

British firm Foster + Partners is currently working on a complex of stepped towers in Mecca, Poland's tallest tower and the transformation of Cedric Price's London zoo aviary into a home for monkeys.

The firm and its founder Norman Foster placed at number 13 on the inaugural Dezeen Hot List, a guide to the world's most read about industry figures.

Santiago Calatrava, who has offices in Zurich, Paris, New York and Dubai, is building the Dubai Creek Tower – a slender observation tower expected to surpass the 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa.

The architect – who came in at number 29 on the Dezeen Hot List – is also working on the UAE's national pavilion for the Dubai Expo 2020.

The post Calatrava's Greenwich Peninsula scheme threatens Foster-designed transport hub appeared first on Dezeen.

The problem with Britain's railway stations isn't anything to do with style, it's that they are all just malls waiting to happen, argues Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column.

It never usually bodes well when a government minister decides to pass judgment on architecture. And so it was when John Hayes – the newly appointed transport minister in the UK's conservative government – gave a speech promising to "challenge an orthodoxy, and give notice to the determinist doubters and defenders of the indefensible that, during my time as Minister of State for Transport, in respect of the built environment, I will turn the tide".

What orthodoxy was this, you might wonder? Well, the orthodoxy was brutalism, that long abandoned and – at least, in fashionable metropolitan circles – nostalgically recalled subgroup of modernism that thrived roughly between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. Brutalism, he insisted, still has a terrible grip on British architecture. "Be warned!" he cried. "The descendants of the brutalists still each day design and build new horrors from huge concrete slabs to out-of-scale, rough-hewn buildings, and massive sculptural structures which bear little or no relationship to their older neighbours."

Yet looking at the new architecture of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow, concrete slabs are few and far between. So what was this all about, and why has the minister with responsibility for transport decided to wage this strange campaign?

There are barely any brutalist structures in British transport architecture

The only building Hayes specifically attacks in his bizarre tirade is London's Euston Station, long a punching bag for the failings of modern transport architecture. Visit Euston today, and it's a little hard to see why. Compared with the gross chaos of the impeccably Victorian Victoria Station – where a neo-baroque hotel, a 90s shopping mall, a 30s coach station, and two iron and glass train sheds manage to create between them one of the most filthy, labyrinthine and dispiriting transport experiences in Europe – Euston is clean, simple. Once you're through the admittedly dank, miserable platforms, you find a hall lined with expensive yet subtle materials, leading to a straightforward, enclosed square. These replaced a neoclassical station which is seldom lamented, except when it comes to the blackened Doric arch at its entrance, demolished gratuitously in the early 60s. The replacement has never been forgiven.

For a few years now, a plan has been in place for Euston. In a weird act of architectural necrophilia, the stones of the old arch have been fished out of the River Lea – Hayes speaks of watching this, with much excitement – and it will stand as the forecourt to a new, shiny, glass station-cum-shopping mall, from which the High Speed 2 trains will depart to Birmingham and beyond.

What makes the outburst especially inexplicable is that there are barely any brutalist – or even post-war modernist – structures in British transport architecture. You can count the major examples on one hand. Harlow Town, maybe, with its enthusiastic approximation of Fallingwater. Stafford, a genuinely rough and harsh interchange on the West Coast main line. The elegant, laconic – and listed – Coventry Station, more International Style than Brutalist; similarly Milton Keynes, whose Miesian grid stood in for the UN Building in one of the Superman films. And that's about it.

What really happened to Britain's railways in the 1960s was a more subtle form of destruction

What really happened to Britain's railways in the 1960s was a more subtle form of destruction, where few actual buildings were demolished. Railways were nationalised in 1945, but even then, Britain suffered from the belief that public transport must be profitable. Huge swathes of the British railway network were erased in the 60s, forcing many onto the roads – a policy that is only now, and slowly, being reversed.

In the 1990s, Britain underwent an experiment with privatisation which was, at first, utterly disastrous, until the private company that ran the network, Railtrack, was renationalised around a decade ago. Currently, British railways are managed by an uneasy alliance of the publicly owned Network Rail and a dubious bunch of franchise operators, each with their own ticketing policies, liveries, train types and charming eccentricities, such as the tinnitus-inducing whining noises and smell of faeces that characterise Virgin Trains' Pendolinos. Stations are mostly shabby, their 19th-century shells crammed with kiosks and eateries, managing to make the lofty and sublime into the claustrophobic and mean. But now, according to Hayes, "because of the government's colossal investment in new transport, we have a unique opportunity to be the vanguard of a renaissance".

For a look at what that renaissance might mean, you could visit any of the stations recently rebuilt by Network Rail. Hayes mentions St Pancras and King's Cross, London's two hugely contrasting northern terminals; both have recently been renovated and extended, very successfully in the case of King's Cross, more ambiguously in the maze-like, subdivided, kitschy St Pancras.

Most continental European stations are vastly more well-made and well-managed

On the other hand, he could mean London Bridge, where ersatz Georgian arches lead to a new hall of great proportions and gimcrack details. He could be thinking of Newport, an "iconic" design value-engineered into corrugated iron grimness. Or possibly Dartford, a galumphing purple and green canopy over a frosted glass image of Mick Jagger. Or, perhaps, Birmingham New Street. This rebuilding of a genuinely awful 1960s rebuilding of a Victorian station was nominally designed by Foreign Office Architects, but any finesse in the curved hall they designed has been ground down by the contractors into an ETFE blob that is already wilting at the corners. To the outside is a silvery facade, broadcasting adverts rather than travel information, and where you would expect the name Birmingham New Street, you find Grand Central – the name of the shopping mall that inhabits most of the new building.

Maybe this is exactly the problem Hayes is talking about, and the engineers and international modernists responsible for this lot are the "heirs to the brutalists", but it seems unlikely. What is really happening is a familiar tactic in contemporary political debate – the culture war. Hayes is an ordinary bloke, he doesn't like that modern stuff. He'll make us great again by going back to the glories of the Victorian age, when we were pioneers, by gad!

With a good culture war, you can ignore the indisputable fact that most continental European stations are vastly more well-made and well-managed (what have those Eurocrats to teach us, eh?), and ignore the institutionalised meanness that makes British transport architecture so grim. The value engineering, the ruthless contractors and cowed architects, and the notion that every station is a mall just waiting to happen. Instead, we can argue about whether or not the new mall, through which you can weave your way to get to your overpriced train, will have a reconstructed Doric arch at its entrance or not.

The post "With a good culture war, you can ignore the real reason why British transport architecture is so grim" appeared first on Dezeen.

Danish firm Bjarke Ingels Group has teamed up with French studio Silvio d'Ascia Architecture to design a loop-shaped station for a new stretch of the Paris Metro. 

BIG and Silvio d'Ascia Architecture designed the Pont de Bondy station as part of the Grand Paris Express, a new set of lines that will extend the city's existing metro system by 200 kilometres.

One section of the terracotta-coloured building is shown surrounding a covered concourse, while two wings extend out from it at right angles. The first passes under a flyover and the second stretches across a pool of water.

Pont de Bondy station will be located on Line 15, a suburban ring route that will surround the periphery of Paris.

This 75-kilometre stretch of track will be divided into three branches – Line 15 South, Line 15 West and Line 15 East – and each of its stations will connect with another mode of transport.

Pont de Bondy is one of nine "emblematic stations" that will be spread across the network. Others include Kengo Kuma's Gare Saint-Denis Pleyel and Miralles Tagliabue and Elizabeth de Portzamparc's Le Bourget station.

Six further architects have also just been named as the designers of 10 stations on Line 15.

London firm Grimshaw will design the Marie d'Aubervilliers and Fort d'Aubervilliers stations, while Parisian studio Bordas + Peiro will be responsible for the Stade de France station.

Paris practice Brenac-Gonzalez & Associates will design two stations – Bobigny and Bobigny Pablo-Picasso – and fellow Paris-based architects Scape/Offscape will draw up plans for Bondy station.

Marseille studio Vezzoni & Associés are to design the Rosny Bois Perrier station, and French firm Explorations Architecture will design the Val de Fontenay and Nogent le Perreux stations.

There are now 37 teams of architects working on the 68 new stations for the Grand Paris Express.

Three remaining stations are yet to be assigned to architects: Rosny-sous-Bois, and Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports.

All stations and lines of the Grand Paris Express are expected to open before 2030.

The post BIG wins Paris Metro competition with looping station design appeared first on Dezeen.

Timur Bashkayev Architectural Bureau and BuroMoscow have won an international competition to design two new stations for the Moscow Metro network (+ slideshow).

Russian studios Timur Bashkayev Architectural Bureau and BuroMoscow were selected to design the Nizhniye Mnevniki and Terekhovo stations in northwest Moscow, in a competition organised by urban design consultancy Strelka KB.

Scheduled to open in 2018, they form part of a series of 80 new stations planned for the network. The city plans to have all of the new stations in place by 2020, which will include laying 160 kilometres of new tracks.

The aim is for every new station to have its own identity. But for construction efficiency, each one is to be developed from the same standard model used by applicants in this competition.

Timur Bashkayev Architectural Bureau put forward the winning design for Nizhniye Mnevniki station.

The proposal involves using bold injections of colour – particularly red – to highlight structural elements within the station. In renderings, these are visible alongside the escalators, on the platforms and to frame the entrances.

The studio suggests that other surfaces be left bare, revealing material finishes that include raw concrete.

"We were working on visual combination, and accentuation of pure form and space," said the design team in their description.

By contrast, BuroMoscow's proposal for Terekhovo station has a more minimal aesthetic, focusing on light and shadow.

The entrance pavilions are designed with fluted walls, while the ticket area is to feature mirrored panels and large circular lighting fixtures. Down on the platforms, illuminated silhouettes will decorate the columns.

According to the designers, the space will be "illuminated with reflected light".

Construction of the The Third Interchange Circuit, a new circle line, started in 2011 as part of a transport development programme backed by the city mayor. The aim is to ensure that 93 per cent of Moscow residents live within walking distance to a Metro station.

The competition attracted 121 entries from 16 countries, and each design can be viewed on the competition website.

"The winning projects for Terekhovo and Nizhnie Mnevniki stations were chosen for their unique and original design and perfect vision delivery in accordance with the highest standards of contemporary architecture," said Marat Khusnullin, Moscow's deputy mayor for urban development and construction.

Other cities planning new metro stations include Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which has appointed Foster + Partners to the job, and Paris, which is set to have one of its stations designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

The post Competition-winning plans unveiled for two new Moscow Metro stations appeared first on Dezeen.

Studio Egret West has unveiled a "revolutionary new design vision" for London Underground stations of the future (+ slideshow).

The design manifesto developed by the London studio prescribes design details "from pavement to platform", including more eye-catching tube station entrances, subdued lighting and blue tiling.

Developed with Transport for London (TfL), the Station Design Idiom offers guidelines for repairs of existing stations, as well as large-scale new builds. The aim is to create a uniform appearance across the network.

The present branding – including the Underground's iconic circle and bar roundel symbol, and its sans-serif typeface – was designed by typographer Edward Johnston in the early 20th century under the direction of TfL's publicity manager Frank Pick.

During the same period architects Harry Ford and Charles Holden developed stations along the District and Piccadilly Lines, while draftsman Harry Beck developed the tube map in 1931.

But TfL said there has been a "lack of confidence" in the Underground's brand identity since the end of world war two, and these new plans are an attempt to change that.

"Not since the days of Frank Pick has there been such an opportunity to holistically rethink the network's design approach," said David West of Studio Egret West. "We are delighted to be involved in the London Underground Station Design Idiom project at such a pivotal point in the network's evolution and to receive recognition for it already."

The corporate blue from the roundel signage features heavily in the new designs, alongside bronze and grey finishes. This so-called 2015 palette will be applied to new stations and used to update older stations in need of repair, using the contrasting colours to help improve navigation and appearance.

Platforms will feature darker grey ceilings, to conceal dirt and wires, while trackside cabling will be covered with removable cladding.

One visual shows a loop of blue tiling that accentuates the circumference of the tube tunnel, while in another the same coloured ceramics line a passageway between platforms.

Previous renovations and cumulative patch repairs had been "insensitive or blind" to the overall station design and had caused a "decline" in quality, said TfL.

"Successive initiatives have compromised [the Underground's traditional brand identity] under the guise of 'progress' and 'freshness'," it continued. "We aim to reclaim and improve this legacy."

The strategy calls for heritage features to be preserved where they exist and for new artworks to be integrated.

"This Design Idiom is about ensuring we put great design at the heart of what we do for now and the future," said London Underground's strategy director Gareth Powell.

The project was awarded the Design Champion Award in the 2015 London Design Awards and the plans are currently on show at Platform project space near Southwark Underground station.

It forms part of a series of improvements to the network. Last year, London firm PriestmanGoode unveiled designs for driverless trains, which are set to be rolled out on four network lines by 2020.

Studio Egret West has previously worked with Hawkins\Brown on the overhaul of the brutalist Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield, and designed a library in south London that looks like a row of books.

The post Studio Egret West reveals designs for future London Underground stations appeared first on Dezeen.

New York's long-delayed World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, has encountered a new problem: a leaky ceiling.

Portions of the terminal's roof started to let in water earlier this month. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is overseeing the project, said the leaks had been caused by work on the Richard Rogers-designed Three World Trade Center tower above.

The transit terminal, whose design was first unveiled in 2004, is still under construction. It consists of an extensive network of subterranean pathways that connect to rail and subway lines and are lined with commercial space.

Above ground, a winged pavilion referred to as the Oculus will serve as the main concourse. The terminal is scheduled to officially open in early 2016, although some sections are already in use.

Construction of Rogers Stirk Harbour's skyscraper, which abuts the Oculus, began this summer. Crews working on the tower are spraying water to minimise dust as they break up concrete, and the water is seeping into subterranean portions of the transit hub, according to reports.

The Port Authority said the leaks are being addressed. "The dripping has been reduced dramatically. We've made some significant progress. Several spaces are dry," said Steven Plate, the director of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority, in a statement.

The transit hub's commercial spaces, owned by the Westfield Corporation, were initially scheduled to open this year.

More than 100 tenants have reportedly leased units within the terminal, including Apple, Michael Kors and Kate Spade.

"This is an enormously complex and unique project," Westfield said in a recent statement.

"We are cooperating and working closely with the Port Authority as they work to complete construction and meet the conditions for the delivery of the retail spaces."

Calatrava's transit hub has faced several setbacks since its design was revealed more than a decade ago.

The original scheme called for an operable roof, so that the building's two "wings" could move up and down, reinforcing the birdlike image that Calatrava aimed to convey.

The movable aspect of the roof was eliminated from the plans, but the project's price tag has ballooned to $3.9 billion (£2.5 billion), nearly double the original estimate.

Intended to evoke a bird in flight, the Oculus has a skeletal appearance, with arched white walls that resemble ribs. The steel building features an elongated operable skylight that measures 355 feet (108 metres) in length.

The interior of the Oculus contains a central oval-shaped area ringed by two levels of shops and restaurants.

The transit terminal is one of a cluster of buildings – some finished, others underway – on the 16-acre (6.5 hectare) World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.

Completed projects include the One World Trade Center tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; the Four World Trade Center tower by Fumihiko Maki; and the September 11 Museum by Snøhetta and Davis Brody Bond.

Earlier this year, Norman Foster was replaced by Bjarke Ingels Group as the designer of Two World Trade Center tower, which is now under construction.

The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is not the first of Calatrava's buildings to cause controversy. In 2013, the owners of the Calatrava-designed Ysios winery in Spain launched legal action demanding he paid part of the £1.7 million needed to fix the building's leaky roof.

The City of Valencia also launched legal action against the architect last year after parts of the opera house roof at his City of Arts and Sciences complex began falling off just eight years after completion.

The post Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center transit terminal springs a leak appeared first on Dezeen.

London Design Festival 2015: artist Camilla Barnard has created a wooden and hand-painted replica of a London Underground station inside the former campus of art school Central St Martins (+ slideshow).

Sculptor and illustrator Camilla Barnard recreates everyday objects and iconic products in wood, ranging from the petite – a Bialetti moka coffee pot and Kellogg's cereal boxes – to the scale replica of a tube station.

Wooden Tube Station was created for this year's designjunction exhibition in London, which has moved into the former art school campus in Holborn, in the central area of the city.

The set-like installation, made entirely from hand-illustrated sheets of timber, was designed over a period of three months at Barnard's studio in east London.

The artist collaborated with woodworker Gunter Luck on the project, meticulously measuring the dimensions of barriers, ticket machines and tiles in London Underground stations to create accurate scale models for the installation.

Barnard and Luck wore florescent orange boiler suits for the opening of the installation as a nod to the workwear of Underground engineers.

"I want to try to replicate as many things as I can, so a Tube station is quite a big iconic one to tick off the list," Barnard told Dezeen at the opening of the installation.

"I started doing it at university and people started to really engage with it and love it so it escalated into a career," she said. "People keep asking me to make stuff and I enjoy doing it, keeping copying."

Barnard hand-painted the Tube maps, stacks of Metro newspapers with spoof headlines and signage within the installation.

While the dimensions of each object are intended to accurately reflect the proportions of a real station,"wibbly-wobbly" painted and drawn outlines give the piece a handmade and illustrative appearance.

"I'm not the most accurate person, I don't think I could make something exactly copied – it looks like a 3D illustration really," she said. "It's got all the measurements and details but then I freehand a bit as well."

The installation is sponsored by Dulux, and the paint brand is referenced in advertisements on the mock tiles that form the station's walls. Barnard carried around swatches from the paint brand for the duration of the design process to help match the colour of elements used in real stations.

"Every time I had to go somewhere I had my tape measure and my camera," she said, "and Dulux sponsored it so I had a load of Dulux swatches that I had to match up."

The names of the team who helped construct the installation are credited on the eastbound and westbound signage behind the ticket barriers, while small tablet screens inserted in the front of the ticket machines shows a video of the installation process.

Hand-written posters detail the names of the designers included in an exhibition of products from Transport for London (TfL) – the organisation responsible for managing the London underground and bus networks – to one side of the installation.

Among the newly licensed TfL products are textiles by Michelle Mason for Swoon Editions, furniture by designjunction director Michael Sodeau and an updated version of the classic 1940s Coolicon lampshade by Trent Jennings.

"The wooden station is kind of a stage to present stuff as well as being a strange installation you can explore," said Barnard.

The installation, which is positioned at one end of a Transport for London-themed cafe at designjunction, marks the beginning of an 18-month programme of events, exhibitions and competitions celebrating London Underground's 150th birthday.

Architecture firm NBBJ recently unveiled a conceptual plan to turn the Tube's Circle Line tunnel into a 17-mile-long moving walkway to honour of the 150th anniversary, while earlier this year Gensler shared plans to repurpose abandoned tube tunnels as a subterranean cycle path.

A fleet of driverless trains designed by London studio Priestmangoode are due to be rolled out across four lines as part of the Tube network's ongoing upgrading works by 2020.

Barnard, who graduated from University of Brighton's undergraduate Materials Practice course in 2011, has also recreated the crown jewels in wood for the annual Designersblock exhibition, which is being held at the Bargehouse in London until 27 September 2015.

Last year, designer Lucy Sparrow recreated over 400 typical convenience store products from felt and exhibited them in an east London corner shop for a temporary installation.

Wooden Tube Station will be on show at the former building of Central Saint Martins until 27 September as part of this year's London Design Festival.

Photography is by Jeff Moore.

The post Camilla Barnard creates life-sized and hand-painted Wooden Tube Station appeared first on Dezeen.

Photo essay: Canadian photographer Christopher Forsyth has spent the last seven months shooting the subterranean stations that make up Montreal's four-line metro system (+ slideshow).

The Montreal Metro is Canada's busiest metro system, with an average of 1,245,700 journeys taken every weekday. But Forsyth says most passengers barely notice the "beautiful design" of its 68 stations, many of which were completed in the 1960s.

In this essay written exclusively for Dezeen he describes his aim to document the spaces of all 68 and reveals the perils of being caught photographing travellers unawares.

The unique architecture, art, and design of Montreal's metro has been the focus of a photography series I have been developing since October 2014. The project aims to encourage Montrealers to see their metro in a new light and show people that beautiful design is all around us.

The construction of the metro system began in the 1960s under the direction of Montreal's mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau. He launched a competition inviting Canadian architects to design their own unique station. Art installations were then commissioned on a station-to-station basis.

Over time, the system grew to what it is today – a microcosm of architectural styles stretched across 68 stations.

Taking the metro almost daily to and from school for years, I began to familiarise myself with the stations. They grew on me. There was one station in particular that began my obsession – De La Savane.

A cement cavern with white dome lights, and lines cut into the concrete walls: the station is beautifully graphic and the light draws you to the metro platforms. It was the first station I photographed, with good reason.

I began sharing my photos on my Instagram using the hashtag #mtlmetroproject. Both Montrealers and visitors alike started to share their metro shots creating an archive of the many stations. It quickly became all I shot.

When travelling underground you lose your sense of time and distance. You can enter one station in a certain neighbourhood, hop on the metro for a few minutes, and find yourself totally disoriented in a completely different part of town. It's hard to understand where you are exactly and how point A and B are connected. I love the metro for that reason.

I enjoy getting lost and finding new corridors and trying to piece it all back together. I've spent days underground just taking photos of what I find.

After a while, you begin to look at the stations less like a commuter going from A to B and notice all the details in between: the ceilings, the walls, the tiling, the movement, and the flow. The way the metros circulate make for interesting photos too.

Over time, motion blur has become a standard of sorts when I look for a good photo. From the metro cars themselves to the flow of the escalators, movement makes for interesting imagery. As I introduced longer exposures to blur movement, people in my photos became less and less prominent.

Over time, huge empty stations became the face of my series – my own personal touch. It helped a lot, seeing as Quebec is the only Canadian province with laws in place against photographing people in public spaces. Not having permission from STM, the metro authority, to take photos, it is a lot easier if I avoid disturbing anyone in the first place. When I'm approached by an employee of the STM, I explain that I'm taking architecture photos devoid of people, and if they tell me to leave, I just move on to the next station.

As the series grows, I hope to one day cover all 68 stations. As stations are renovated and their appearances change, I strive to capture what they once were and what they are now.

The post Christopher Forsyth embarks on a project to document all of Montreal's metro stations appeared first on Dezeen.

Foster + Partners has been appointed to design an £8 billion transport system for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that will encompass a network of new metro, ferry, bus, and cycle terminals.

Norman Foster's London-based firm, which was rumoured to be working on the project back in October 2014, has signed a contract reportedly worth £54 million to develop a long-term vision for the future of the city's transport infrastructure.

The masterplan will include the design of all new metro stations, the trains and the branding. Foster + Partners will also create a series of new public spaces beneath the elevated railway tracks.

"Designed in response to the local climate, the masterplan is city-wide and draws on the high-density, compact urban model of the ancient quarter of Al Balad, with its mixture of uses and comfortable, walkable shaded streets," said the firm in a statement.

"Currently only 12 per cent of the population live within a 10 minute walk of Jeddah's transport nodes – the project aims to achieve 50 per cent, through a process of densification and strategic planning," it added.

"Each station node will create a new neighbourhood, with a unique character, and together these will create a diverse and vibrant city."

Foster + Partners – whose past projects include a concept for a zero-carbon city in Abu Dhabi and a proposal for a "cycling utopia" in London – is the third company to be signed up to Jeddah's public transport project.

In May 2014, architecture and engineering firm Aecom was given an 18-month contract to provide pre-program management consultancy services, while French railway engineering firm Systra was appointed in July to provide preliminary engineering designs.

Jeddah is the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia, after the capital city Riyadh. It is also set to become home to the world's tallest building – the Kingdom Tower currently under construction is expected to have a height of 1000 metres.

According to the Saudi Gazette, the new metro system could be completed by 2020 and open in 2022.

The post Foster + Partners to design all stations and trains for new Jeddah transport network appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese firm Kengo Kuma & Associates has won a competition to design the Gare Saint-Denis Pleyel, one of three key stations that will be built to serve a new stretch of the Paris Metro.

The station by Kengo Kuma and Associates will be located in Saint-Denis, a suburb to the north of Paris, and is one of the main interchanges for an extension to the metro that will create a circuit around the capital.

Kuma's 45,000-square-metre station will be nine stories tall – with five levels above ground and four below – and will also house shops, a multimedia library and a business centre.

"The project is designed as a unique opportunity to open up the district by connecting the two sides of the city over a huge railway network of the Parisian North station," said Kengo Kuma and Associates. "It will enable the site and the city to increase its metropolitan scale significantly."

Kuma's Gare Saint-Denis Pleyel will comprise wedge-shaped tiers constructed from glass and steel, which according to the architects pay homage to the rail tracks. Overground train tracks will run across the front of the building, while access to the metro station will be at basement level.

"The station becomes an extension of the public spaces on many levels," said the architects. "Multiple levels continue in spiral, so the station functions as a complex that brings in streets in vertical layers."

The building will be surrounded by a large pedestrianised plaza broken up by patches of planting. Sloping terraces will run around the exterior of the three upper stories, providing access to a roof garden.

"The station will be a new centre of the city, and its complementary programme will bring about a dynamic social and cultural dimension to the district of Pleyel," added the architects.

The station is part of the Grand Paris Express project, which aims to build an automated metro ring-route around the outskirts of the city. Three branches from this route will serve developing neighbourhoods – Saint-Denis, Clichy-Montfermeil and Le Bourget.

A total of 72 new stations will be built, but each of the branches has a main station that has been designated as an "iconic" project, with the designs commissioned via international competitions.

Spanish architecture firm EMBT is designing the Clichy-Montfermeil station in collaboration with French architects and engineers Bordas + Peiro, while Brazilian-born Paris-based Elizabeth de Portzamparc will design the Le Bourget station.

Construction dates for the project have not been released, however in 2013 €300 million (£220 million) was invested in the first 20 miles of the Express network.

It is expected that 130 miles of track will be laid by 2030, connecting the new network to airports and major TGV high-speed train stations that link Paris to other regions of the country.

Images courtesy Kengo Kuma and Associates.

Project credits:
Architects: Kengo Kuma and Associates
Developer: Société du Grand Paris
Quantity Surveyor: LTA
Landscape design: AC&T Paysage
Lighting design: 8'18"
Acoustics: PEUTZ & Associés
Sustainibility: AIA Studio Environnement
Facade engineer: RFR
Security and fire consultant: VULCANE

The post Kengo Kuma wins bid to design station for new Paris Metro line appeared first on Dezeen.

Criss-crossing concrete beams brace the excavated walls of two new stations that have been added to the metro network in Budapest by local studio Spora Architects.

The stations developed by Spora Architects are among ten that will be added along the Hungarian city's new 7.34-kilometre M4 metro line, which connects the city's South-Buda district with the centre of Pest on the opposite side of the Danube river.

First conceived in the 1970s and developed over the subsequent decades, the plans for the M4 stations have been updated to reflect contemporary requirements and aesthetic standards.

"The most challenging aim for us was to rationalise the structures, architecture, technology and space as originally planned, while at the same time re-thinking the project according to the 21st century's spirit," explained the architects in a statement.

The stations at Szent Gellért tér and Fővám tér are situated on opposing banks of the Danube and are the deepest on the line.

Both stations employed a "cut-and-cover" construction method in which the spaces were excavated from top-to-bottom rather than mined, allowing the architects to introduce daylight from the surface into the deepest levels.

The system of cross-bracing reinforced concrete beams reduces the need for columns, enabling the platform areas to become open and uninterrupted spaces.

It also provides a distinctive visual feature that unites the "twin stations" and is used across the different levels.

In a film produced to describe the design process, architect Tibor Dékány explained that the structure was based on the growth of bone tissue, which "is known to be denser and stronger where the most weight is carried."

The above-ground and underground spaces at the Fővám tér are designed to accommodate an interchange for the metro, trams, buses, boats, cars and pedestrians, with the interior carved up into a series of expansive halls.

Here, the complex system of beams evokes the streets and traffic systems above ground.

"It reflects the experience of urban traffic," added Dékány. "Zigzagging from here to there, junctions, crossroads and forks everywhere."

Crystal-shaped skylights at ground level supplement the artificial lighting, which creates an interplay of light and shadow within the cavernous interior as light is projected onto the overhead beams.

In places where passengers interact more with the interiors, the architects chose materials that give the surfaces a sense of tactility or visual interest.

The entrance and circulation areas of both stations feature weathered steel panels that have been applied to the walls, designed to offer a warm contrast to the concrete surfaces.

Tunnels within the Szent Gellért tér station are decorated with a swirling mosaic by artist Tamás Komoróczky, which references the tiles used inside the famous Gellért hotel situated nearby.

Photography is by Tamás Bujnovszky.

The post Cavernous Budapest metro stations feature concrete lattice overhead appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the first commuters have travelled through Grimshaw's newly completed New York subway station and retail space, the Fulton Center.

Grimshaw's new Lower Manhattan transit hub connects eleven New York City subway lines and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) trains that serve the state of New Jersey.

The Fulton Center, which opened to the public yesterday, is expected to receive over 300,000 daily commuters and form a "gateway to and from Lower Manhattan".

The London architecture studio worked in collaboration with engineering firm Arup on the design for the station, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Capital Construction Company (MTA).

"From the beginning, we were inspired by the ambience and activity of Grand Central Station," said Grimshaw project partner Vincent Chang.

"We endeavoured to design a similar environment for transit customers and visitors, creating a new front door to downtown New York."

The station is one in a series of schemes contributing to the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan, which this month has also seen the completion of One World Trade Center by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

According to Grimshaw, the station "celebrates the city's history while looking forward to the area's future and its escalating growth."

The structure comprises a glass box topped by a large glass and steel dome spanning 37 metres. An elliptical opening in the domed roof, surrounded by criss-crossing struts of steel, lets light stream into the concourse and platform levels.

"Tapered steel columns draw inspiration from the historic neighbourhood's cast-iron buildings and complement the integration and restoration of the adjacent Corbin Building," said a statement from the studio.

"The open design provides unimpeded customer movement and sight lines across a level ground plane extending from the major thoroughfares of Broadway and Fulton Street."

A circular lightwell in the ground floor, directly below the atrium, funnels light into the lower ground platform areas. Passageways are artificially illuminated by an overhead grid of fluorescent tubes.

To one side of the atrium a spiral staircase wraps around a glass-fronted elevator leading up to shops that curve around the central well.

"The central architectural concept of redirecting natural light deep into the transit environment – in an effort to humanise the space and orient passengers – culminates in the design of the dome's interior and a new integrated artwork," said the studio.

An artwork, called the Sky Reflector-Net, was commissioned for the space from New-York designer James Carpenter. The piece is made up of diamond-shaped sections of perforated metal and hangs like a hood from the roof opening, intended to mirror images of the changing sky above the station.

"This new station makes traveling easier for subway riders, and is a beautiful public space for visitors and commuters to enjoy," said New York governor Andrew Cuomo. "We now have a new cornerstone in Lower Manhattan, and I am proud to see this unique complex opened to the public."

For job opportunities at Grimshaw, visit their company profile on Dezeen Jobs.

The post Grimshaw's Fulton Center welcomes first New York subway commuters appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architects have been selected for two of three new "iconic" train stations in Paris that will be built as part of the Grand Paris Express ring-route rail project.

The Spanish architecture firm EMBT founded by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue will design the Clichy-Montfermeil station in collaboration with French architects and engineers Bordas + Peiro, while Brazilian-born Paris-based Elizabeth de Portzamparc will design the Le Bourget station.

The architects were selected via competition, with a third winner still to be announced for the Saint-Denis Playel station later this month.

The Grand Paris Express project is run by public agency Société du Grand Paris and involves building a new, fully automated metro line to form a ring-route around the perimeter of the city, with three offshoots to serve developing neighbourhoods.

€300 million was invested in the first 33 kilometres of the network in 2013. The aim is to build 205 kilometres of line by 2030, connecting the network to airports and major TGV high-speed train stations that connect Paris to the rest of France. A total of 72 new stations will be built as part of the project.

A number of the stations have been designated as "iconic" projects, with international architecture competitions launched for three of these. Firms including Foster + Partners and UNStudio were shortlisted for the two stations that have now been won by Miralles Tagliabue (EMBT) and Bordas + Peiro, and Elizabeth de Portzamparc.

EMBT's 4,800-square-metre station will be located on the border of the neighbourhoods of Clichy-sous-bois and Montfermeil – an area that was at the centre of violent riots in 2005.

"A new station of the Grand Paris Express will be a symbol of the change for these areas," said a statement from Miralles Tagliabue, the firm now led by Benedetta Tagliabue following the death of her partner Enric Miralles in 2000.

"This new station will bring Paris to Clichy-sous-bois and to Montfermeil and will include them into the Grand Paris project."

The scheme includes a new public square as well as an underground station sheltered underneath a pergola roof, with natural light brought into the space using a large skylight. Long, zig-zagging escalators provide access to the ticket hall and platforms.

"Our approach is looking for the maximum integration of the metro station's access into the urban context," explained the architects. "The access is made through a slow slope with stairs that invites the people coming out of the station to participate on the square."

The square will host markets twice a week and also provide secure bicycle parking facilities.

"We would like to transform this grey and abandoned place into a vivid and colourful square, which inspires joy and optimism," said the architects. "This is why we based the motifs of the pavement, the shapes and the colours of the roof on the tissues, decorative motives and colours from Africa."

De Portzamparc's 6,800-square-metre station will be the connection point for travellers to and from Le Bourget airport.

The design is formed from a series of rectangular volumes. A skylight brings natural light to the platforms below ground floor level, which are accessed via escalators.

"The train station based on the principle 'total flex' provides more flexibility to the future underground platforms and for the future other transport networks," said a statement from Elizabeth de Portzamparc.

"Thanks to the used materials (wood, warm colours) and a strong presence of nature, the station becomes a place to 'live', a combination of user-friendly and sensorial atmosphere."

The main flow through the space will be centred around two "courts" or concourses over two levels.

Due to client restrictions, no images have been released yet of the exterior design but the firm said it would include a "totem" to increase the visibility of the station, which would turn act as "the symbolic and landmark identity of the Parisian metropolis."

The post Miralles Tagliabue and Elizabeth de Portzamparc to design new Paris metro stations appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Dutch firm UNStudio has developed plans for Qatar's first public railway network in an attempt to encourage more of the country's residents to choose public rather than private transport (+ slideshow).

UNStudio has designed over 30 stations for the Qatar Integrated Railway Project (QIRP), an all-new metro network of four lines that will connect destinations in the Greater Doha Area and the coastal city of Al Khor.

The goal is "to create a service which encourages the use of public transportation as a valid and clean alternative to private transportation for the population of Doha".

The first phase of the project involves the construction of approximately 35 stations all designed by UNStudio, which has been appointed principal architect on the project. For phase two, a further 60 stations could be added.

The team – whose recent projects include an airport in Georgia and a shopping centre in China – have developed a system of architectural branding designed to create distinct identities to station, line and the network as a whole.

This includes recurring architectural elements across the network, themes for different lines and a selection of curated content for individual stations.

An "architectural branding manual" produced as part of the project will offer guidance to design-and-build contractors implementing the proposals.

"Through the production of a design manual and with the use of adaptive parametric design, it has been possible for us to create a design with many variants, yet one which maintains a coherent identity throughout all of the stations," said studio founder Ben van Berkel.

"In this way, we can combine local contextual differences within an overall identity and parametrically adapt physical factors such as wayfinding, daylight penetration, passenger flows, constructive elements etc. in a complex but extremely disciplined system."

UNStudio also plans to introduce elements from the traditional regional architecture. Vaulted ceilings will be a consistent design element, thought of as a "referential bridge between Qatar's historic architecture and culture and its future as a beacon of innovation and prosperity".

Strips of lighting integrated into the vaulted surfaces will function as natural wayfinding elements.

The team names one of their inspirations for the project as the Caravanserai – a kind of inn found on ancient trade routes, which often featured enclosed courts that served as both gathering and resting places.

"The celebration of arriving and departing has always been found in the design of stations," said Van Berkel.

"For the QIRP we devised an adaptive parametric system which creates open, light and welcoming interiors for each of the individual stations. Traditional Qatari architectural features are reinterpreted to incorporate new, transformative qualities which capture daylight and direct this into the interiors, creating uplifting and luminous atmospheres," he added.

The project will also include creating safe crossings over busy road intersections.

Visualisations are by Methanoia.

Project credits:

Architecture: UNStudio
Structure and MEP: RHDHV
Facade engineering: Inhabit
Lighting engineering: ag licht
Wayfinding: Mijksenaar
Passenger flow analysis: MIC – Mobility in Chain
Fire and life safety: AECOM

The post UNStudio introduces public trains to Qatar with metro project appeared first on Dezeen.

Stairs glazed in warm shades of red, orange and yellow lead up from the platforms of a train station in Lund, Sweden, to a new pedestrian bridge by Metro Arkitekter (+ slideshow).

Swedish studio Metro Arkitekter – who previously completed a Copenhagen station with a spotty circular roof and are part of design firm Sweco – designed the Skyttelbron bicycle and pedestrian walkway for the Lund Central railway station.

As an addition to an existing underground passageway and open-air bridge, the walkway connects the New City Hall on one side of the station to the city centre of Lund on the other side of the tracks.

As part of the brief, the architects worked to incorporate colour into the build to contrast with the more neutral surroundings.

They installed panes of glass in sunset shades on the sides of the stairs and along the bridge, which function as stained-glass windows.

"The first idea, and perhaps the strongest in terms of design, is that we wanted to bring colour into an environment where virtually everything is in shades of grey, brown or green," architect Rafael Palomo told Dezeen.

Connecting with the existing bridge, the new walkway and stairwells were constructed using both concrete and a lightweight zinc and titanium alloy – a material that can withstand the harsh Swedish winters and will be easy to maintain.

Four stairwells step down to the platforms in increments, giving them their zigzagging profiles. Each one also wraps a concrete elevator shaft, which gives cyclists access to the bicycle pathway.

"We wanted to work with the stairs in a sculptural way and decrease the sense of height between the platforms and the bridge," Palomo explained.

Thin concrete stands support the walkway, leaving space around them for pedestrians to access the platforms.

Circular skylights perforate the roof of the bridge, helping to illuminate the walkway during the day, while a series of spotlights brighten the space at night.

Photography is by Felix Gerlach, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here's from more text from Metro Arkitekter:

Skyttelbron, Lund, Sweden

Skyttelbron is a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the railway tracks in Lund Central Station. There were already two connections between the west and east side of the railroad tracks. The first, on the south of the station area, is an underground passage, the so-called "Ryde's passage." The second, further north in height with Clemenstorget, is an open bridge. So Skyttelbron would be the third connection. This then becomes a closure of the station area to the north and will also connect the New City Hall to the centre of Lund.

The first idea, and perhaps the strongest in terms of design is that we wanted to bring colour in an environment where virtually everything is in shades of grey, brown or green. We chose to work with warm colours and made it pretty easy for us by providing a colour to each stair and platform. 4 stairs = 4 colours. The colour is seen from the outside but also affects how one looks at the environment and acts as a filter for the light.

A simple design. We wanted to keep the design together with a simple shape, while we wanted to use as few materials as possible. Coloured glass, concrete and Rheinzink titanium zinc in two different shades.

As for the stairs so we had to think hard because the bridge is where the platforms ends. This in practice means that the width decreases. The stairs are portrayed to twist around the elevators. They thus become more sculptural while they break down the sense of the difference in height (over 6 meters).

The challenge in this project was not in its complexity and coordination between all involved . The challenge was mainly that the conformation we developed together with the municipality would survive the coming detailed design with all requirements of the Transport Administration in this type of project.

The choice of roofing materials we made was based on a few different aspects.We wanted a material that would be aesthetically attractive and complementary and contrasting to the coloured glasses. We had a limited budget, which is nothing special. But the interesting thing here was that we already from the start had a dialogue with the client (Municipality of Lund) on budget and what costs were reasonable for which parts. A requirement from the client was that the project budget would not exceed 36 million SEK in total.

Titanium Zinc would withstand the harsh environment and need non or very limited maintenance. This aspect came into the process early, even in conceptual phase. From an environmental perspective, the client wanted to be sure that the materials we chose would meet their and the Administration environmental requirements.

It should be easy to build, because the bridge would be built alongside the tracks and then moved and assembled on site at night over a couple of weekends. The facade should also be lightweight since we did not want to add large loads to the steel structure.

As for constructive solutions, they are very simple. Band coverage rooftop, wheel cover on facades with double folding in both cases in order to get a dense outer shell. Then there is the solid craftsmanship. The only part that required some research from Rheinzink page along with the tinsmiths was the rounding of the corners. We wanted the facade and the roof to hang together. It took some time and care to find a solution where rounding, gutter and stair ceiling worked together.

The post Colourful stairwells zigzag up to meet Metro Arkitekter's Skyttlebron railway bridge appeared first on Dezeen.

Laser-cut stainless steel creates an intricately patterned surface on the walls of this upgraded metro station in Amsterdam by architecture firm Maccreanor Lavington (+ slideshow).

Maccreanor Lavington's Rotterdam studio overhauled the 1970s Kraaiennest station in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, increasing its capacity and modernising its facilities.

The decorative steel screens surround the new ground-level entrance, allowing natural light to filter inside during the day. After dark, lights glowing from within transform the structure into a glowing beacon that makes it easy for locals to find.

"At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood," said the architect in a statement.

As well as the laser-cut panels surrounding the base of the station, the opaque upper walls are also made from stainless steel. The architect says this material will age well and need little maintenance.

Unlike the old station, which only offered stairs, the new facility incorporates a series of escalators to transport passengers up to the platform. This will help it offer regular transport to around 100,000 local residents.

The upgraded Kraaiennest station is the latest in a series of infrastructure improvements underway in the 1960s neighbourhood. It follows the 2008 completion of Grimshaw's Bijlmer Station, which was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

For job opportunities at Maccreanor Lavington, visit their company profile on Dezeen Jobs.

Photography is Luuk Kramer.

Here's a project description from Maccreanor Lavington:

New €14 million Metro Station completed in Amsterdam

London and Rotterdam based architecture firm, Maccreanor Lavington has completed a major new metro station in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The new 550m² station and 1,880m² platform in the neighbourhood of Bijlmermeer started on site in 2010 and sits on the site of the original station, built in 1970.

The metro station features a ground level entrance with new escalators to take passengers up to the platforms, a major improvement for citizens as the old station only had stairs. The ground level entrance provides the main focal point of the station with an elegant stainless steel facade with a floral design. The laser cut design allows plenty of natural light to flow through the entrance, helping the passenger journey to seamlessly flow from the external surroundings into the station.

At night time the design allows the station to be a lantern for the local neighbourhood, creating a sense of warmth on street level and creating an instantly recognisable feature for the station. The architects' chose stainless steel for the external facade due to its durability and low maintenance enabling the station not to need constant upkeep.

Since the beginning of the late 1990s the area has seen massive investment transforming it from its previous negative public opinion and now making it a thriving suburb of Amsterdam.

Now completed, the station will be in use by over 100,000 residents in Bijlmermeer, a vast increase on the number of users from when the station first opened and completes one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in Europe in recent history.

Architects: Maccreanor Lavington Architects
Contractor: Strukton Bouw
Client: Dienst infrastructuur Verkeer Vervoer, GVB, Stadsdeel Zuidoost
Interiors: Maccreanor Lavington
Structural engineer: Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam
M&E engineer: Arcadis
Lighting Consultant: Sjoerd van Beers, Beersnielsen

The post Maccreanor Lavington overhauls Amsterdam's Kraaiennest metro station appeared first on Dezeen.

This new metro station in Leipzig, Germany, by Swiss architect Max Dudler comprises a 140 metre-long tunnel made up of illuminated glass blocks.

The Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz S-Bahn station is one of four stops along the new Leipzig City Tunnel railway line that has been under construction for over ten years and is set to open next month, creating a new link between some of the city's major stations.

Swiss architect Max Dudler, whose previous projects include a glowing library and a castle visitor centre, won a competition to design the station in 1997 with his proposal for a glowing tunnel with a gently curved concourse and raw concrete details.

Back-lit glass blocks are arranged in groups within a concrete framework to create large glowing squares across the entire length of the walls and ceiling.

"The seemingly endless repetition of the same element in the course of the slightly curved, light-filled hall increases the sensation of the dimensions of this already large structure," said the studio.

The station platform is covered in pale terrazzo and interspersed with concrete volumes that form seating areas and signage boards.

"All station furnishings of the station are arranged as geometric concrete sculptures," added the studio.

Entrances are positioned at the north and south ends of the platform, where solid concrete staircases are sandwiched between escalators. At street level, these entrances are contained within rectilinear structures that were also constructed using glass blocks.

Photography is by Stefan Müller.

Here's a project description from the design team:

Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz Station

S-Bahn trains will cross beneath the centre of Leipzig from December 2013. This is when the 
5.3 kilometre long city tunnel Leipzig, a joint development of Deutsche Bahn AG and the Free State of Saxony, will be completed. Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz / Platz der Friedlichen revolution station on the southern end of the historic city centre is one of four stations of the major project that is currently one of the largest inner-city infrastructure projects in Europe.

The design of the station is based on architect Max Dudler's successful competition entry from 1997. The Swiss architect's impressive 140 metre long and 20 metre wide station concourse has just recently been awarded the city of Leipzig's architecture award.

The station concourse, with a rectangular section and a slight longitudinal curve, is situated 20 metres below ground. Walls and ceilings of the elongated, column-free hall are clad with large, backlit prefabricated glass blocks set into a framework of fair-faced precast concrete. This gives the station concourse a bright and spacious feel. Extreme repetition of one and the same motif makes its actual dimensions almost intangible for passengers.

The light-coloured, jointless terrazzo flooring of the insular platform acts as a quiet counterpoint to the seemingly endless pattern of the walls. All necessary station furniture is arranged on the platform in the shape of geometrical concrete sculptures, all functions such as seating, timetables and ticket machines having in a sense been subtracted from or carved out of the concrete cubes.

The station concourse's supporting structure of precast reinforced concrete is not visible behind the glass block cladding. The wall elements of the glass block envelope are anchored to a steel substructure on the tunnel wall. The ceiling elements are suspended from the building shell.

Passengers access the station through the entrances on the north and south ends of the station that are fitted with solid staircases, escalators and elevators. The architectural design of the two entrances is in deliberate contrast to the filigree, seemingly transparent station concourse. As soon as they dip beneath the surface of the square, the staircases and their inner casings are made entirely of fair-faced concrete. The minimalist, almost coarse design conveys an impression of descending towards the interior of the earth, as if it was tunnelled directly into the rock.

The stairs and the platform combine seamlessly into a monolithic ribbon. Similar to the station concourse, the aboveground entrance buildings have also been fitted with glass block components. They will help bring the square to life when illuminated at night.

Wilhelm Leuschner was a social democrat politician and part of the resistance against National Socialism. Formerly known as Königsplatz, this square in Leipzig was renamed Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz in his honour in 1945. In 2013 it was finally renamed "Platz der Friedlichen Revolution" to honour the important role it played during German reunification.

The post Glowing glass blocks surround the Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz metro station by Max Dudler appeared first on Dezeen.

News: British designer Thomas Heatherwick has been commissioned to design a string of metro stations for Beijing and is also bidding to develop two new stations on the London Underground.

Thomas Heatherwick, who is currently travelling with London Mayor Boris Johnson on a trade mission to China, has so far been appointed to work on two stations for the Chinese capital, which plans to add 125 miles to its underground rail network, but could develop an entire line with as many as 20 stations, according to a report in the Evening Standard.

"There will be a chance to think about the whole line as an entity, as a character and my interest would be how you could make that feel more distinctively Beijing," he told the paper.

Heatherwick has also made an informal bid to work on the extension to the Northern Line in London, which if approved would see new stations constructed in Nine Elms and Battersea.

The designer, who previously worked with government organisation Transport For London on the redesign of the city's iconic red double-decker bus, describes the London Underground's heritage as being of "phenomenal character and idiosyncrasy".

The extension is yet to be approved by the UK government, although official procurement is unlikely to take place for several years.

Earlier in the trade mission, Johnson urged Chinese students to apply to London's design schools, claiming they will be welcomed "with open arms".

Other projects Heatherwick has completed in China include the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010 and a shopping centre in Hong Kong. In London, he is currently working on a garden bridging the River Thames. See more design by Thomas Heatherwick »

Photograph by Elena Heatherwick.

The post Heatherwick to design Beijing Subway stations and bid for work on London Underground appeared first on Dezeen.

The circular roof of a metro station near Copenhagen looms over sunken platforms like a spotty UFO.

The station, designed by Swedish studio Metro Arkitekter, is located near to the airport on the route to the city centre.

The 52 spots that perforate the round concrete roof are skylights that filter daylight through to the two platforms below.

Narrow steel columns elevate the 45 metre-wide roof from behind curved glass partitions, which define the station’s perimeter.

At the base of these partitions, a curved concrete bench with teak edges circles the station.

A metro station combined with a park was also featured on Dezeen recently - see the story here and see more stories about railway stations here.

Photography is by Rafael Palomo.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Station Hyllie

Hyllie is the first station you reach when travelling by train from Copenhagen's Kastrup airport and is therefore Malmö's gateway to Copenhagen. This is no traditional station building - we have been working with other elements instead. The large round roof (diameter 45 m) - lit from below using uplights - hovers like a UFO above the station entrance. The roof is perforated by 52 round lantern lights which allow daylight to penetrate right down to the platforms, thereby eliminating any sense of an underground station. Daylight and lines of sight have acted as important parameters for creating a safe environment. The station is a regional and local train station with four tracks and two platforms. Bartenbach LichtLabor of Innsbruck are responsible for the lighting concept. The artistic decoration has been carried out by Kristina Matusch of Malmö.

Address: Hyllie Torg, Malmö
Architect: Metro Arkitekter AB through Claes R Janson (resp), Ola Arnholm (project architect), Carl Kylberg, Anna-Karin Joelsson (HL), Jörgen Åkerlund.
Other consultants: ÅF/ Sweco, Tyrens, Sweco
Constructor: Jernhusen AB
Building contractor: NCC

Area: 10 000 sqm
Year: 2010
Material used: stainless steel structure, fiber concrete, fiber cement, concrete, glass, teak details and railings

The post Station Hyllie by Metro Arkitekter appeared first on Dezeen.

Spanish architects Rstudio have designed a combined metro station and park in Alboraya near Valencia.

The new stepped park offers views into the semi-submerged station through large strip windows.

Escalators bring passengers down from a single-storey entrance hall to the underground platforms, where trains depart for the city centre.

Seven grass-covered terraces descend from the street towards the station entrance.

Walls and windows in and around the station are decorated with red, blue and yellow stripes to aid passenger navigation.

The old above-ground station located next to the site has been converted into a cafe while a pedestrian pathway replaces the old tracks.

This project is the second train station to be featured on Dezeen this year, following a metro station in Naples filled with sculptures and graphic artworks - see all our stories about railway stations here.

Photography is by David Frutos.

Here's some more information from the architects:

Palmaret train station
Alboraya

The new train station of Alboraya-Palmaret is built together with a big park, which stands out the new platform in a natural manner.

The park has an approximated surface of 6.000 square meters. It has seven platforms in different levels, and leads us from the street to the hall of the new station.

We can find in it rest areas, as well as children’s playground under the shadow of a large number of tress of different species.

Through the projected intervention over the old Palmaret station, we can highlight that most of the old platforms have been removed. In this way we can connect the new park with the Horchata Avenue.

Considering the indoors of the new station, two important areas have emerged. The first one, a big Hall with views to the park, leads us in a natural way to the second area, the platform, that due to its double high gives the station a great atmosphere.

Click above for larger image

The building materials employed in the entire renovation gives the station as well as the park a modern image and constitutes the reference for the whole Alboraya district.

Click above for larger image

Year: 2010
Development company: G.T.P. Ente Gestor de Infraestructuras
Builder: Ute Metro 3 Alboraya. Ezentis. Aldesa Ortiz e Hijos
Collaboration: Eg Ineco (manager engineering)
Alfonso Peris (landscape)
David Frutos (photography)

Click above for larger image

The post Alboraya-Palmaret metro station by Rstudio appeared first on Dezeen.

New York designer Karim Rashid has renovated the University of Naples subway station in Naples, Italy.

Commuters pass between huge columns with the profiles of faces towards a shifting lenticular wall of graphic patterns.

Sculptures and graphic artworks line the escalators, leading to platforms with backlit patterns on the walls.

More about Karim Rashid on Dezeen »

The information below is from Karim Rashid:

The University of Naples subway station is highly trafficked by a multi-cultural, academic community of thousands of passengers a day.

A creative concept that communicates and embodies knowledge in the new digital age, language in the shrinking global landscape, innovation and mobility in this third technological revolution.

Naples is no longer a historic southern city of Italy but instead now is an integral intellectual information haven that extends itself throughout the rest of the world.

This is the changing Italy and the station is a metaphor of this new wired global condition. It integrates the station with its surroundings, as well as provides a platform for innovative, cutting-edge design strategy.

We utilize the descension from the piazza to the subway platforms to represent a metaphorical shift from the conscious brain to the spiritual mind. Experiencing this journey, the commuter is able to define one’s own experience by interpreting the individual shift from a busy “brain state” to a focused “mind state”.

Entering into the station from the piazza to the subway station, the visitor will walk though a space clad with tiles, each one with is printed with new words created in this last century. Once the visitor arrives in the station lobby, he/she is impacted by the soft nature of the space, the striking palette of colors and patterns.

Along the back wall of the station lobby level, lenticular iconography changing colors and perspective provides an interesting siteline as commuters proceed to the platforms below. Intersecting the space between the heads profile benches (metaphorically intersecting the dialogue) is an abstracted, SYNPOSIS sculpture reflecting the nodes of the brain and the synapses which occur within.

When descending to the subway platforms via escalator, a visitor experiences a transition from the busy piazza to a more intimate, focused environment. It is here where we display various artworks and other graphic art as a focal point. These abstract images invoke the user to shape the environment according to his/her own creative interpretations.

Rolling LED programming situated behind frosted glass displays universally recognized words, referencing knowledge and the multicultural university setting.

Descending and ascending the stairwells on each respective platform, the steps have abstracted portraits of Dante and Beatrice. Once the commuter arrives at the end of the escalator, transformational digital art follows he/she to the platform stairways. The accent colors, lime and pink, indicates the direction and guide visitors through the descent to the final destination.

Airframe surfaces speak about the beauty of our airframe voxels of the flux and ever dynamic multidimensional information and data age (infostethiks).

The platform level of the subway station is where the people spend the most static time. One’s experience while waiting for the subway is enhanced by the tranquil, imaginative environment of the “mindstate”. Seating is provided in the form of landscape forms.

The back wall of the subway platform is a backlit artwork, providing a continuous soft glow in the space. Across the platform, digital artwork creates an entertaining distraction. In addition to related iconography, the piece could include a shadow of an oncoming train, etc. to signify a train’s arrival.

A subway station is a temporal, transitional space, yet the commuter is contained for a short period of time before continuing his/her journey.

As he/she transitions from one environment to another, he/she is most likely reviewing the day’s previous events, or preparing for the next task. Our concept focuses on the commuter experience within the train station, and how the surrounding environment can serve as a respite in a day’s schedule.

Globalove, Karim Rashid

PROJECT TEAM: KARIM RASHID, CAMILA TARIKI, DENNIS ASKINS.

See also:

.

Switch Restaurant by Karim Rashid	Fluxus by Karim Rashid and Michela Vianello	Snoop and Woopy by Karim Rashid for B-Line

The post University of Naples Metro Station by Karim Rashid appeared first on Dezeen.

This underground railway station with criss-crossing concrete beams is by Hungarian firm Spora Architects and currently under construction in Budapest.

Fővám tér forms part of a new metro line, comprising 10 stations, that will connect south Buda with the city centre.

Three levels of reinforced concrete beams rise up through a void above the platforms.

At ground level a new square will be created with large glazed areas to admit natural light down into the station.

All photographs are by Tamás Bujnovszky.

Here's some more from the architects:

“Fővám tér” - UNDERGROUND STATION BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

The new metro line planned in Budapest is to connect South-Buda with the city center. 10 stations will be constructed in the first step. Fővám tér station is on the left side of the Danube river.

"Fővám tér" station is a twin station of the Szent Gellért tér, similarily with a complex stucture composed of a cut-and-cover box and tunnels.

The complexity of the structure is even greater, since here a new tunnel for the tramline and a new pedestrian subway has to be constructed, as well. Having the new underground station, Fővám tér will become a new gateway of the historic downtown of Pest.

The boxes are supported by three levels of reinforced concrete beams, the structure of which will be similar to a net.

There are three layers of this network, which keep the walls of the box like a bone-structure.The design of the box is determined by this sight of concrete net-structure.

Due to the construction technology, huge rooms have been created in the inner spaces of the stations. The section of the space is proportional to cross section of average street in Pest , built in the eclectic period in the 19th century, so the station can be interpreted as a inverse street or square under the surface.

Playing on natural light has been an important aspect in the architectural formation of the entire line.

The main goal is –apart from giving enough light of course- to attend on the interior design and show the architectural forming as much as possible. On the surface of Fővám tér a huge square will be created without traffic.

This will allow of locating glassy, crystalloid skylights, which will let the sunlight reach the platform level, emphasizing the unique character of the beam network.

Project credits:
Project: M4 metro line SZT.GELLÉRT TÉR, FŐVÁM TÉR UNDERGROUND STATIONS, BUDAPEST
Location: center of Budapest, Quay of River Danube, Hungary
Client: BKV Rt. DBR Metró Projekt Igazgatóság (Budapest Transport Ltd. DBR Metro Project Directory)
Year designed: 2005
Year built: 2007-2011
Status: under construction
Budget: cca. 20 million Euro/ stationvolume: 7100m2/

Stationdesign: sporaarchitects Ltd. – Tibor Dékány, Sándor Finta, Ádám Hatvani, Orsolya Vadászteam: Zsuzsa Balogh, Attilla Korompay, Bence Várhidi
General design: Palatium Stúdió Kft. -Zoltán Erő, Balázs Csapó
Construction, installations: consortium of Főmterv, Uvaterv, Mott-Macdonald
Aplied art: Tamás Komoróczky
Photo: Tamás Bujnovszky

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

See also:

.

National Stadium, Beijing by Herzog & de Meuron	Conceptual extension by Axis Mundi	More architecture stories

The post Fővám tér by Spora Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has completed a station with a vaulted glass and steel canopy in Liege, Belgium.

Called Liège-Guillemins station, the project links two areas of the city previously divided by railway tracks.

Calatrava aimed to enhance this permeability by creating a building without facades, relying on the roof for shelter and the building's identity.

The canopy covers five platforms and extends over 145 meters.

Below ground level a series of pedestrian bridges and walkways connect one end to the other.

The station accommodates new services for Belgium's high-speed rail network.

Photographs are copyright ELTGV/Alain Janssens.

Here's some more information from the project managers:

--

LIEGE-GUILLEMINS, A NEW GENERATION OF STATIONS

At the same time as meeting key railway requirements to position Liege at the heart of the North European high speed network, Euro Liege TGV SA wished to make the station’s aesthetics a central concern. Monumental and expressive, airy and transparent, it is the work of the engineer and architect Santiago CALATRAVA. It is already asserting itself as a symbol of the city’s renewal and as one of its most prestigious visiting cards.

Railway modernization first

The SA Euro Liege TGV was created in 1993 and given the job by the SNCB of designing and building the new Liege-Guillemins station. Then came an important phase of examining the site: a 2.5km section of line on either side of the station, as well as the station itself, which lies on a particularly run-down stretch of railway line.

The legacy of the past was totally thrown into question with a dual objective: to modernize and simplify the infrastructure. High-speed offered Liege, like Brussels and Antwerp, the opportunity to radically improve comfort, services and facilities for all passengers.

In 1995, the conclusions of the feasibility study showed that the existing passenger building and the railway infrastructure would not allow the potential offered by high speed to be exploited and that the criteria of accessibility, comfort and inter-modality which characterize a modern travel centre were not being met.

The various weaknesses were thoroughly reviewed:

• platforms on a curve, too short and too narrow,
• very low speed of access to the station,
• numerous track crossings,
• poor positioning of the Brussels–Germany line although more than 50% of the clientele used it,
• unused, dead-end tracks,
• a signal box with outdated technology,
• antiquated passenger accommodation,
• shops which had grafted themselves onto the building over time, despite being unsuitable.

Straight away, a fundamental decision was made: to keep the station on its historic site and to accommodate domestic and international services in the new installations. The attraction and competitiveness of high-speed rail depends particularly on the fact that it links city centres, without break of load. So the investments made will benefit all passengers - both those who use the high-speed train and those travelling on conventional SNCB trains. This same concern is also the reason for dual operation on the new line between Liege and Louvain. It provides access to Thalys, at 300km/hr, and also to Intercity trains (particularly used by numerous commuters) at 200km/hr .

In addition, the close proximity of the A602 motorway to the station will result in a major change on the site: henceforth, the station will have dual access and be connected directly to the motorway network - a unique feature in Europe. This second access to the station will be coupled with the provision of 800 parking places adjoining the platforms. Taking into account the already existing places, a total of 1,500 will be available on the Liege-Guillemins site.

To lead the project to a successful conclusion, major rail options were taken:

• It was decided to move the axis of the new station by 150 metres towards the Meuse from the current passenger building, in order to meet a double necessity, of which the first is clearly railway related:
• constructing longer and wider rectilinear platforms, facilitating the access of trains into the station and the boarding and disembarking of passengers
• establishing a seamless connection between the station and the nearby motorway network.
• Layout and speed were made priorities on the Brussels-Liege-Germany line, which is used by more than 50% of customers.
• A new signal box equipped with the latest technology was built.
• The track grid was completely reshaped: rationalizing the points, elimination of sidings, raising the speed of entering the station up to 100km/hr.

The complete reconstruction of the site will enable a gain of 3.5 minutes when crossing Liege.

The challenge of architectural quality

Beside the railway requirements to be met when modernizing the site, Euro Liege TGV SA made the station’s aesthetics a central concern. And it innovated by launching an international architectural competition in 1996, as a result of which Santiago CALATRAVA was chosen to design the station’s volumes and aesthetics. An approach which, at that time, was unprecedented for Belgian railways.

Mr CALATRAVA is a Spanish engineer and architect; in particular, he has built some remarkable stations: Zurich-Stadelhofen, Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, Lisbon Oriente… He has now been commissioned to design the New York multi-modal interchange on the Ground Zero site, work on which started in the autumn of 2005.

The project in Liege was marked by transparency and dialogue between two neighbourhoods - the one residential, the other resolutely urban. The station repairs the division created in the C19th by the arrival of the railway; it builds bridges between the neighbourhoods it had separated in the past. Since the station does not have façades in the classical sense of the term, station/city permeability is very strong. It is the immense steel vault which takes the place of a façade. Like a breaking wave, prolonged by the platform shelters, it transforms the urban streetscape.

Because movement is at the heart of Mr CALATRAVA’s buildings, it poetizes them and breathes life into them. The structures the architect designs are so many sculptures into which one can penetrate. In steel or concrete, they are fluid, rhythmic and their forms are particularly expressive. For Mr CALATRAVA, concrete is an interesting material because it can be moulded and sculpted directly on site; he works it with the intention of making it a “plastic event”. The remarkable character of the concrete is as much due to the complexity of the forms to be made as to its texture and colour - white in many of the spaces created.

Moreover, in 2006, the ECSN (European Concrete Societies Network) made no mistake in giving its Award for Excellence in the Buildings category to Liege-Guillemins station. This prize rewards a project in which the use of concrete is both exceptional and innovative. It was the first time a structure had received such a prize in Belgium.

Liege at the heart of the north European high-speed network

A dozen major cities in the north of Europe are linked by high-speed trains, shortening distances considerably. Thus Liege is 39 minutes from Brussels Midi, about 1 hour from Cologne, about 2 hours from Paris and Frankfurt and about 3 hours from London. And for those not using the high-speed train, commuters in particular, Brussels-Nord is only 48 minutes from Liege by Intercity, via the new line. The station moreover occupies a central position within the Meuse-Rhine Euroregio. With its new infrastructures, it is the relay station for two Euroregional space cities and their hinterland: Hasselt in Belgium and Maastricht in Dutch Limburg.

Even as the construction of the station draws to an end, the focus is now on its surroundings. Indeed the Guillemins district is in need of major remodelling. Yet it is an unchallenged observation: stations are the most powerful driving forces for a city. Liege-Guillemins station, a C21st mobility tool served by exceptional architecture, offers a potential that must be seized. With this in mind, Euro-Liege TGV and Mr CALATRAVA have put forward proposals for redesigning the contours of the district. The guidelines of this master plan restore a true sense of coherence to the district, in tune with the city and its river. The urbanistic gesture echoes the architectural gesture by underlining the regional and European dimension of the major communication node that Liege-Guillemins has become today.

LIÈGE-GUILLEMINS STATION 2000-2009

Project manager: Euro Liege TGV SA
Contracting authorities: SNCB-Holding – Infrabel
Engineer and architect: Santiago CALATRAVA.

Successful tenderers (European public contracts)
Main construction works and rail infrastructure: AM CFE-GALÈRE-DUCHÊNE-WUST
Metallic structure: EMESA (Elaborados Metalicos)
Special techniques (escalators, travelators, lifts, service lifts): SCHINDLER
Glazing: SM PORTAL-LAUBEUF(vault-platform shelters) ; BELGO METAL (awnings)
Special Techniques (plumbing, heating, lighting,…): GEMMO
Finishing : Cit BLATON

The post Liège-Guillemins station by Santiago Calatrava appeared first on Dezeen.

Construction has begun on a subway station in Naples, Italy, designed by London studio Amanda Levete Architects and artist Anish Kapoor.

Called Monte St Angelo Subway Station, the project was inspired by a network of unfinished tunnels.

It will have two entrances - one made of Corten steel that will appear to have been pulled up from the ground, and another made of aluminium that will appear to sink into the earth.

Photographs are by Peppe Testa.

Here's some more information from Amanda Levete Architects:

--

Construction begins on Naples subway station

Monte St Angelo Subway station in Naples, a project in collaboration with Anish Kapoor is now on site. The brief from the City of Naples, to create a fully-functioning tube station that is in itself a work of art, demanded a synthesis of purpose and beauty that was fundamental to our creative process. A second primary point of inspiration was the site. At the surface the station will be the central element in the urban and cultural regeneration of the Traiano district that has suffered in its recent history from infrastructural isolation and neglect.

Simultaneously the network of tunnels and vaults designed and subsequently abandoned midway through a previous tube station project, describes an underworld barely tangible in the gleaming and sanitary underground spaces of contemporary subway projects. In the shadow of Vesuvius and embedded in layers of early civilisation, these dark and brutal concrete shells have been inspirational to our formal and material approach.

We began the process by stretching and moulding plasticine forms, synthesising the primary access requirements within and around the existing negative volumes. As layers of programme were introduced, the eternal tension between form and function was worked through while preserving the singular purpose and integrity of the forms.

The two entrances to the subway are a response to their particular urban condition. With the backdrop of a mountain the Universita entrance in Corten steel appears to have been pulled from the underground to create a dramatic, powerful and almost primal form. The Triano entrance is a typical urban condition bordered by medium rise residential buildings. Here the more refined aluminium form appears almost impossibly supported as it slips into the void below.

The post Monte St Angelo Subway Station by Amanda Levete Architects and Anish Kapoor appeared first on Dezeen.