Florence Station by Norman Foster

[Kris]

http://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/pub/scheda.php?id=590


As part of the creation of a new high-speed rail network, the Italian Government has instituted a major programme of station restructuring, including the creation of many new stations. This competition-winning design for Florence Station provides a new facility that will connect with the citys existing Santa Maria Novella station via a new tramline. Driven by a deep respect for the architecture of this magnificent city and a quest for clarity of passenger movement, the scheme is both a celebration of the experience of entry into Florence and an attempt to reduce the complexities of modern travel.

The majority of the new Bologna-Florence high-speed line is in tunnels. Correspondingly, the platform level in the new station is located 25 metres below ground. The station chamber consists of a single volume, 454 metres long and 52 metres wide, built using cut-and-cover techniques similar to those deployed at Canary Wharf Station. Passengers move from platform to ground level via lifts or escalators. Between the platform level and the street are two levels of shops, while a terrace at street level offers a view over the tracks and trains arriving and departing. The composition is capped by an arching glazed roof, which evokes the great railway structures of the nineteenth century. Arriving in the station, the generous volume, with natural light flooding in from above, gives an immediate sense of space and light; one can see the sky and sense the air of the city.

The scheme is designed to ensure durability and ease of maintenance, to minimise energy consumption and reduce running costs. Natural light is a crucial part of this equation, so too is temperature control. The arching roof structure provides a system for effective temperature regulation by drawing warm air out through via permanent vents. It also incorporates photovoltaic cells to generate power. The walls and floors are lined with a palette of rich materials familiar throughout the city - including a highly figured green and white marble - which will patinate gracefully over time. Sensitive to its historic location, but forward looking in its use of energy and other resources, the station offers a model for contemporary rail travel.

www.fosterandpartners.com

[Kris]

The Times

September 26, 2005
Florence goes underground
Notebook: Architecture by Marcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent

IN JUST five years’ time there will be a sensational new way to arrive in Florence. Some 170 high-speed trains a day will serve the city. At peak times they will arrive every 10 minutes, depositing passengers in the centre, close to the much-admired 1930s station by Giovanni Michelucci.

For the design of its new TGV station, Florence, the most Italian of cities, has turned to a foreigner. It chose Norman Foster over Spain’s Santiago Calatrava and Japan’s Arata Isozaki (who many Florentines have apparently not forgiven for the “risky entrance” he proposed to the Uffizi gallery).

More than half the high-speed line from Bologna to Florence, says Foster, is in tunnels and the new station will sit in a giant excavated box 450m long, 25m deep and 50m wide, rather like Foster and Partners’ dramatic Underground station at Canary Wharf. The question everyone asks is whether the station will have any distinguishing elements that will announce to passengers that they are in Florence rather than Bilbao or Berlin.

Foster is not given to overt historic references of any kind, but here his partner David Nelson explains their simple solution: “The Florentine element will lie in the materials.” The platforms will be paved in Verde Alpi, the green marble familiar on the Duomo and other Florentine churches. It will be formed into striking patterns, alternating with white marble. Abundant use will also be made of bronze, an echo of Ghiberti’s famous bronze doors to the Baptistery. It will be used for details which elsewhere would be executed in stainless steel and also for the large columns which will be clad in bronze. “It will be more expensive, but still only a tiny proportion of the overall construction budget,” explains Nelson.

One great quality of all Foster’s best buildings is the intelligent and enlivening use of natural light. Underground stations usually depend heavily on artificial light. Here Fosters, working with Arups, the engineers, have devised an arching roof which keeps a sense of cool and shade while allowing shafts of sunlight to stream down to platform level. Light enters through the diamond- latticed roof, descending through large triangular cut-outs in the ground-level concourse.

The shade is provided initially by dramatic roof projections of more than 50 metres at either end of the station, so that taxi and car drop-offs and pick-ups can be made out of the rain or sun. At Foster’s Stansted airport the over-sailing roof, though majestic, does not project far enough to protect those forced to alight in an outer drop-off lane.

Foster’s cantilevers have the look of giant sharks’ mouths, a rival to the intense drama of Jean Nouvel’s portico which shoots out over the lake on his Lucerne concert hall. With a daily average of 38,800 passengers expected, the descent to the platforms will be made by eight pairs of travelators (for those with trolleys), 20 escalators and 22 lifts.

Fosters has completed the working drawings and the scheme will shortly go out to tender, with completion forecast for 2010.

[ablarc]

Italy's not as rich as we, and here they are building what amounts to a high speed subway line from Bologna to Florence. Compare that to our pitiful bumbling with the Second Avenue Subway. Bet this line will be open and running before ours.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Who is we, and how rich do you think we are?

[ablarc]

"We" is the united States, currently the world's second richest country (after Luxembourg) as measured by GDP per person.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I always thought rich was having lots of disposable income. We're like that guy in the commercial - nice house, pool, luxury car in the driveway, a sit-down mower cutting a lush lawn. Looks good until he answers, "Are you kidding? I'm up to my eyeballs in debt."

So just how many lira does Italy budget for defense?

[czsz]

Like many European countries though, it does prioritise infrastructure within its deficit spending structure. That is, if you're going to get into debt with something, it's better that it be an investment in the national economy rather than a black hole of expenditure. Compare to the US: infrastructure lapses (even the highways here are falling apart compared to those in Europe, to say nothing of the rail system, and unprofitable airlines are subsidised as a matter of pure convention) while money is funnelled into expensive military weapons systems that will never be used, counterproductive military interventions, aid to countries which will use it to create problems requiring more aid to solve...

It's not so much about defence as an idiotic conception, at the highest levels, of what "defence" entails.

[Citytect]

Wonder what Calatrava and Isozaki proposed. Foster's looks nice.

[lofter1]

... even the highways here are falling apart compared to those in Europe ...

But God forbid if you have to pull off to the side of the road on an Italian hi-way -- no shoulders at all

[ZippyTheChimp]

Like many European countries though, it does prioritise infrastructure within its deficit spending structure.

I'm not arguing the wisdom of it, just noting the reality.

$439 billion for fiscal 2007, and that doesn't include Iraq, which is funded separately. There is no sense in building railroads when we don't seem to have a coherent energy policy.

We will never get infrastructure like this until national proiorities are changed. I heard on Imus this morning that, despite escalating gas prices, Hummer sales have tripled.

[Kris]

Wonder what Calatrava and Isozaki proposed.

I only found these pictures of models:


Isozaki.


Calatrava.

Plus these of the winning entry:





http://www.archphoto.it/IMAGES/barto...bartolozzi.htm

[Citytect]

Thanks Kris. The Isozaki proposal looks interesting. Calatrava's looks a lot like some of the other stations he's designed. The problem I see with Foster's design is the loooong, continuous glass walls on on both sides.

[Kris]

Yeah, it's freakishly long. In the longitudinal photo it evokes a dead fish to me.

My hope is that, by the time America realizes the importance of investing in rail infrastructure, maglev technology will have become much more affordable and will be chosen for the Northeast Corridor instead of a traditional high-speed system. Maybe this present neglect could actually turn out to be an advantage in the future.

[Fabrizio]

I liked Calatravas design. It was in his signature style but looked appropriate for a city of catherdrals. The sad thing is that Florence´s existing central train station is a modern masterpiece from 1936 that is falling apart.....and now we´re building this. I wonder how long it will be before all of that glass on this new station is a filthy mess.

[Alonzo-ny]

So just how many lira does Italy budget for defense?

Euros now