An analysis of satellite images of contemporary metropolises reveals an element that is as recurrent as it is impactful: the railway station as the source of the railway groove.
If the railway station is an essential node for transport, its connecting infrastructure produces visible effects on the urban fabric: sharp separations between otherwise connected parts of the city, impermeable areas and unused surfaces.
How can architecture mend the urban fabric without precluding transport activity?
A design possibility emerges as a key tool to achieve this goal: air rights – the possibility of building “above”. Exploiting the area above the transport system can promote a functional and urban reactivation of these “missed” spaces (De Wilde, 2006).
The research analyzes case studies in which architectural interventions on railway station infrastructure – understood as nodes and places (Bertolini, Spit, 1998) – have successfully restored the city’s spatial continuity, identifying valuable design models: Tokyo Station, and homonymous city itself, as urban wound, train station’s connective capacity, and allocation of air rights; William J. Wilgus’s pioneering air rights project for Grand Central Terminal in New York; and Rive Gauche area (Paris) toward Gare d’Austerlitz, as a representation of the potential capacity of the above-ground railway within the built city.
Through a process of research on design, the contribution aims to study applied examples to identify scalable and re-applicable dimensional, connective and morphological models. Architectural solutions can be leveraged as tools and valuable expertise for identifying and designing cases that are still in potential.
The objective is to evaluate infrastructure no longer as physical barriers but as engines of urban regeneration through the air rights as a design lever to imagine new forms of urbanity “above” flows, and overcome a strictly functionalist view of infrastructure.
Bibliography
- Bertolini, L., Spit, T. (1998). Cities on Rails: The Redevelopment of Railway Stations and their Surroundings. E & FN Spon.
- Crisman, P. (2009). Inhabiting the In-between: Architecture and infrastructure intertwined. University of Virginia School of Architecture.
- de Wilde, S. (2006). Rail Estate / Multiple use of space and railway infrastructure. Movares.
