Jiaxing Train Station by MAD Architects blends old and new

Jiaxing is a historic metropolis 60 miles southwest of Shanghai. There, MAD Architects—a global workplace with areas in Beijing, Rome, Jiaxing, and Los Angeles based by Ma Yansong—has accomplished a brand new prepare station, marking the studio’s first transportation infrastructure reconstruction and growth venture.

MAD Architects was tasked with changing a dysfunctional prepare station that operated in Jiaxing between 1995 and 2019. The defunct station was solely 43,000-square-feet, too small for a metropolis of 1.4 million folks, and counting. The brand new prepare station was designed to facilitate development within the quickly increasing metropolis, and its design is emblematic of the avant-garde, experimental studio’s repertoire.

“We should always rethink and redefine the spatial patterns of such transportation infrastructure buildings in China,” mentioned Ma Yansong after finishing the station. “We will break free from the frequent pursuit of grandiose monumental buildings and make them city public areas with transport features, pure ecology and cultural life, the place residents are glad to go, keep, meet, and luxuriate in.”

The renovated railway station now has six strains and three platforms (the earlier iteration from 1995 had 5 strains and three platforms) with two arrival and departure strains on every of the upstream and downstream strains. This new capability will assist the station accommodate an anticipated 5 million folks a 12 months, with an hourly capability of two,500 folks at peak hours.

To innovate and riff on modern prepare stations getting inbuilt China at the moment, MAD Architects seemed to the previous. Designers opted to create a full-scale recreation of the unique 1907 prepare station that stood onsite earlier than its second counterpart from 1995. The reconstructed station was constructed utilizing 210,000 pink and inexperienced bricks fabricated from mud from a close-by lake, and different regionally sourced supplies. 

The interiors on the fully-reconstructed 1907 station keep a dialogue keep true to the unique design. The reconstructed station’s ready corridor, ceiling, and tunnel partitions are clad with anodized aluminum honeycomb panels. This, MAD mentioned, will soak up extra noise. Above the reconstructed hub, MAD specified a “floating” metallic roof lofted above the expanded website outfitted with photo voltaic panels that energy the station, the architects mentioned. 

The brand new station’s main transport and business features—i.e. its entry and exit platforms, and ready halls—had been tucked underground. This breaks with conventional station design considering, MAD mentioned, and offers delivery to a brand new typology, or what the architects name a “prepare station within the forest” design. By putting these important features under grade, MAD was in a position to plant over 1,500 timber at avenue stage, together with beech, camphor, osmanthus, maple, sebifera, sequoia, and cherry blossoms.

“The non secular axis, which incorporates the recreated 1907 constructing, is marked with beech timber that, when totally fashioned, will create a cover throughout your entire north sq. in entrance of the station,” MAD mentioned.

To the south, a sq. incorporates seven buildings with completely different tradition and business makes use of, in addition to a central garden. Going ahead, the garden will develop into a venue for outside occasions like concert events and artwork festivals.