projects /
Nodes and Nets
Premise
A train station is two things at once: a node in a network and a place in the city. This distinction between the hierarchical and sequential relationship to the passenger and the multi-layered and multi-scalar relationships to the community drove the generative ideas behind the project. A high speed rail connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco implies a further blending and merging of the world that one thinks of with air travel. Yet trains are not airplanes, and their spatial and logistical qualities differ such that there no risk of conflation between airport and train station typologies. While airports blend towards sameness, outside the city, outside all context really, train stations are inherently local and are embedded in the unique contextual fabric of their location.
A train station is two things at once: a node in a network and a place in the city. This distinction between the hierarchical and sequential relationship to the passenger and the multi-layered and multi-scalar relationships to the community drove the generative ideas behind the project. A high speed rail connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco implies a further blending and merging of the world that one thinks of with air travel. Yet trains are not airplanes, and their spatial and logistical qualities differ such that there no risk of conflation between airport and train station typologies. While airports blend towards sameness, outside the city, outside all context really, train stations are inherently local and are embedded in the unique contextual fabric of their location.
Strategy
Located at a rift zone of development, this project takes this local context and uses it to generate an expanded program of public park, bazaar, and hotel. The station loading platform itself is elevated above the park and bazaar, allowing free flow through the site and amplifying the spectacle of the arriving train.
Located at a rift zone of development, this project takes this local context and uses it to generate an expanded program of public park, bazaar, and hotel. The station loading platform itself is elevated above the park and bazaar, allowing free flow through the site and amplifying the spectacle of the arriving train.
This project was published in the 2007-2008 prospectus for the California College of the Arts, and shown at the Jury Prize show in January 2007.