High Speed Rail Station
Florence, Italy, 2004
Foster + Partners
Image Source: Brady Peters / Foster + Partners
The competition-winning design for Florence Station is part of a new high-speed train network. The station is 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 and so, 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. Passengers move from platform to ground level via lifts or escalators. Between the platform level and the street are two levels of shops. A terrace at street level offers a view over the tracks and trains arriving and departing. The station is covered by an exciting, 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.
Image Source: Brady Peters / Foster + Partners
While I was not involved in the conceptual design of the station, I was intensely involved in resolving and rationalizing the complex geometry of the station's elegant roof. I worked with the design team to understand, document, and communicate the geometric principles with which they designed the roof and its panel elements. I then used these design algorithms to write a computer program that generated the different roof panels. I translated this generating script into a series of drawings that became the Geometry Method Statement for the roof. The Geometry Method Statement is a series of drawings that describe the geometric complexities of the project to the fabricators and contractors for the project without the need to share the digital model.