|
In late 2009 TMA was invited to join the Laing O’Rourke, Bombardier, Serco team, to work with a plethora of local enthusiastic engineers and architects to develop a bid for the design, build, operate contract for the nascent Sydney Metro. With much travelling to and fro over many months, and with a bright team of our own based in the city, Sydney Metro became a highlight of the TMA prospectus and a considerable feather in the cap of all those involved.
Initially cancelled, and then enlivened a few times, the latest version of the Sydney Metro adopts a greater suburban connectivity, revised station locations in the CBD, and a quite alternative alignment to string them all together. Our station proposals too, with their bid-efficient box and tunnel interfaces and their locally referenced materiality have been developed, discarded, relocated, renewed and, of course, between that early bid and the now emerging results, new professionals have brought new ideas and new stakeholders have brought new ambitions. I had come to Sydney to see how things had progressed, to meet colleagues from those former times and to visit, before it opens, one of the stations most similar in configuration to that which we developed. 
|
Central But first to Central Station, moved 200m east from our front yard site into the beating heart of the existing station. While the new trains don’t yet run, the concourse is open to the public, and in it can be seen some of the finer cross-programme detail that is still being installed in the unfinished stations. First, I should mention the old Central station terminal building, which I have always enjoyed as an essence of a more domestic character of the early days of railway in Australia, the arrival and departure point between the city the wide Outback, a place full of potential and delight. And while it had seen the construction of its new neighbour immediately adjacent, and a substantial interchange route connected, I was relieved and pleased to find that old character retained and the bygone ambience largely untroubled by its new neighbour. Attracting people to use trains can sometimes mean just leaving things alone. Of the new work, I was particularly intrigued by the subsurface design for, while the new elements include a big roof of some architectural merit, big roofs, however acrobatic, are always just big look-at-me structures made of comparatively lightweight bits allowing whatever to occur beneath with little influence. One day perhaps it will don the character and memories of its old neighbour, but for now it’s just a big fancy roof. The low-level concourse which it covers and into which a new bank of escalators descends from the old station, is simple and open and easily navigable by being ill-defined, effortlessly capturing and connecting the variety of old and new routes that centre on this space. This was a good decision; make a big hole and let what happens happen, because in a station it will, without overwrought architectural acrobatics. A few steps further down and the first subsurface space is a remarkable piece of construction - the site plumb in the heart of this busy station, surrounded by working passageways, topped with platforms and tracks, and undercut by the new Sydney Metro - the structure is large spanning and yet subdued, the inevitable complexity of construction and the resolved forces belied by the lightness of the resulting space. The lightness is enhanced by the subtle modelling of the materials, detailed with care and continuity, the gently angled walls, in plan and in section and often in both, relieving the constraints on movement of underground spaces, countering the containment of oppressive overarching forms from which even the scale of Elizabeth line stations occasionally suffer. The bright Sydney light is allowed in and dappled and reflected by the wave sculpted stone surfaces, which pass their warm red hue to all internal materials. The generosity of concourse widths and the endless nature of their ends, as they drift into other spaces or are reflected in stainless steel mapping. The cathedral qualities of the escalator wells and the truly transparent lift shafts, not the somewhat over-structured features of glass walled lifts, but glass lifts travelling within large glass light tubes. Advertising and signage are at a respectable minimum, adding to the comfort of the space, sufficiently direct and recognisable routes without stress inducing containment, distraction, and instruction. Signs adding to clarity rather than clutter and the whole operated by a helpful committed staff, with badges provided personally by Howard Collins and proudly worn. This is a space that doesn’t reinforce the inevitable heavy structural form but adjusts it ever so gently to lift the spirits. Station design is not all about numbers and time saving, it can also provide a quality of comfort and ambience within which that time is spent. |
|
|
Pitt Street
I had contacted David Coker - my ever-youthful Crossrail Bond Street compadre, who has for some years been pressing ahead with the development of Sydney Metro - and was invited to view Pitt Street, now Gadigal station, on strict instructions that I should not circulate photographs until after the opening day. There’s a bit to do yet and the contractor is hard at it still, and that day is in the coming July or August depending on which of my hands-on tour guides I asked. (I’ve since seen a few pictures pop up on Linked-In but I’m keeping my promise).
My particular interest in Gadigal station is that it is the only station sitting approximately where we had designed it back in 2009/10. Since then, the allocated entry/access sites have changed, but there is much about the design that is a little too familiar and the comparison with the more architecturally developed Central is pronounced.
Unlike Central where the station has no oversite development to likely compromise its footprint, Gadigal appears to be influenced by at least two masters, one commercial and one operational, and at least two designers in much the same space but from very different style houses.
Gadigal comes in two, only geographically related parts, tight boxes for the vertical, and generous tunnels for the horizontal. In planning it’s very neat and tidy, a simple public transit system, integrated and sufficient wayfinding, few distractions to complicate the journey, a couple of obligatory but none too distracting artworks, the way things should be as an efficient response to an economic scope. But unlike Central, it’s not station architecture, it’s building the plan and lining it with ill-researched back-pocket finishes.
There seems to be no attempt to blend the design of each part, rising and falling in comparably characterless red sandstone panels, and finding the trains through curved layers of shiny white tubes and unintentionally mottled white GRC reminiscent of the Elizabeth line. The two styles are uncomplimentary, the junctions unspectacular. And I anticipate it will stay looking reasonably fresh until it’s been in use for a few months, when the inevitable maintenance problems arise as the white GRC, the white tubes and the absorbent stone begin to absorb the consequences of close-passing passengers, pressured tunnel air and the cleaner’s mop. (I have since had cause to use Tottenham Court Road Elizabeth line and the implications of this approach are already emerging.)
All in all, while splendidly efficient and being delivered by an excellent team obsessively concerned with solving the quality of detail and the potential for maintenance, the economic efficiency of the station might be said to reflect the reception architecture of any city CBD and the impression is of a lost design opportunity, a significant deficit when compared with Central.
I had contacted David Coker - my ever-youthful Crossrail Bond Street compadre, who has for some years been pressing ahead with the development of Sydney Metro - and was invited to view Pitt Street, now Gadigal station, on strict instructions that I should not circulate photographs until after the opening day. There’s a bit to do yet and the contractor is hard at it still, and that day is in the coming July or August depending on which of my hands-on tour guides I asked. (I’ve since seen a few pictures pop up on Linked-In but I’m keeping my promise).
My particular interest in Gadigal station is that it is the only station sitting approximately where we had designed it back in 2009/10. Since then, the allocated entry/access sites have changed, but there is much about the design that is a little too familiar and the comparison with the more architecturally developed Central is pronounced.
Unlike Central where the station has no oversite development to likely compromise its footprint, Gadigal appears to be influenced by at least two masters, one commercial and one operational, and at least two designers in much the same space but from very different style houses.
Gadigal comes in two, only geographically related parts, tight boxes for the vertical, and generous tunnels for the horizontal. In planning it’s very neat and tidy, a simple public transit system, integrated and sufficient wayfinding, few distractions to complicate the journey, a couple of obligatory but none too distracting artworks, the way things should be as an efficient response to an economic scope. But unlike Central, it’s not station architecture, it’s building the plan and lining it with ill-researched back-pocket finishes.
There seems to be no attempt to blend the design of each part, rising and falling in comparably characterless red sandstone panels, and finding the trains through curved layers of shiny white tubes and unintentionally mottled white GRC reminiscent of the Elizabeth line. The two styles are uncomplimentary, the junctions unspectacular. And I anticipate it will stay looking reasonably fresh until it’s been in use for a few months, when the inevitable maintenance problems arise as the white GRC, the white tubes and the absorbent stone begin to absorb the consequences of close-passing passengers, pressured tunnel air and the cleaner’s mop. (I have since had cause to use Tottenham Court Road Elizabeth line and the implications of this approach are already emerging.)
All in all, while splendidly efficient and being delivered by an excellent team obsessively concerned with solving the quality of detail and the potential for maintenance, the economic efficiency of the station might be said to reflect the reception architecture of any city CBD and the impression is of a lost design opportunity, a significant deficit when compared with Central.
Gadigal
The change of name from Pitt Street to Gadigal is to acknowledge Australia’s past and its people and the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Sydney now lies. You won’t visit too many Australian websites without evidence that this has become an important message.
When TMA was designing the stations, the message was not so prominant and that is just as well, for while we can read of the long history of Australia, it is not our place to begin to understand the culture of its Aboriginal people, either past or present. But we did recognize the natural fabric, of red sandstone, sea water and sunlight, and its importance to all Australians, and we were eager to acknowledge this fundamental connection in our stations. In Central we find those same thoughts developed and made manifest, and it seems appropriate and satisfying to a European eye.
It was only late in the day that the name of Pitt Street station was changed to Gadigal to respect the Aboriginal occupants of this land and yet, as it appears to have had no effect on the design, there seems to be more than a hint of tokenism in the name change. Had the ambition to recognize the ancestors in who’s land this station now intrudes been adopted earlier, I can’t help but wonder what more wondrous solutions may have been found, and by what means. Should this principle of recognising all Australians be more than a token, it must surely inform the design process and form of future stations in Australia, to the inevitable benefit and richness of their architecture and ambience.