Metro Station 20 Sofia, Subway Design Bulgaria, Architect, Project, News, Architecture, Picture

Station 20 Sofia, Bulgaria Metro Line 1 Building

Sofia Metro Station Development designs by various architects

Location: Bulgaria

Design: Amin Taha Architects

New Metro Station 20 on Metro Line 1 in Sofia, Bulgaria

6 Mar 2012

Station 20 Sofia Building Design

Sofia ‘Wild’ – Metro Station Competition

Our narrative follows a journey to the underworld through an informal Romantic Landscape tradition, bringing the flora of the surrounding mountains into the city with a second wider ambition to link its green and open spaces. Creating a city-wide linear park with themed differentiating identities for coherent mental mapping and urban navigation that is integral to the transport system as well as an opportunity for urban generation.

Journey to the Underworld

7000 years of global cultural history has mythologized the journey to and from the underworld signifying the path from curiosity through knowledge to wisdom with the loss of innocence as an accompanying narrative. The influence on architecture and landscape design reached a height in the classical period in Hadrian’s Villa, predating the English Romantic Landscape Movement by bringing ‘Nature’ into the site. ‘Nature’ is controlled through a series of transitional moments, experiences using architecture through cut stone to form ‘rocks’ or rusticated grottos and colonnaded halls.

Formal + Informal Landscapes – The Romantic + Rational

Our journey to the underworld appropriates the classical mythological architectural and landscape language using romantic landscape elements to dramatic effect. Drawing a meandering journey through the linear park along which adjacent buildings and public spaces offer temptation to stop, socialize and digress. Two tectonic portals signal the metro and underworld with the architectural language and material texture of fissured and carved out space emphasised with shafts of natural light to ticket halls and platforms alike.

Traversing this line above ground is the rational Baroque Landscape tradition of control and order, of ground-scape, material, gridded trees, pleached canopies and colour. This formalisation establishes a harpsichord rhythm and tone, opening up for cafe terraces and public spaces. The bus stops act as lynch-pins, linking the formal landscape and the metro entrance.

Construction, Materials + Cost effectiveness

Landscaping – Formal Baroque areas are specified with robust and traditional Sofia bush hammered granite paviours, forming a footpath against adjacent building sites. The granite sets are pulled as strings to the road kerb edge to maintain the compacted sand areas that make up 50% of these areas under the canopy of Acers and Cheery Trees. Informal Romantic areas are low or self- maintaining shrubs and grasses set into rockeries surrounding the root-balls of semi-mature pines placed as if in-situ.

Metro – the civil engineering element is maintained as a cost effective ‘cut + fill’ method with drain cavity to retaining structures. The inside face is envisaged as a pigmented part pre-cast and part in-situ concrete with again the bush hammered finish also applied to aid material and thematic continuity.

Station 20 Sofia design images / information from Amin Taha Architects

Amin Taha Architects

9 Jan 2012

Station 20 Sofia Building

Location: Bulgaria

Design: Peter Ruge Architekten

STATION 20

New Metro Station 20 on Metro Line 1 in Sofia, Bulgaria

Acting as a primary metro connection between Sofia’s city centre and the airport, and the hub of a major commercial redevelopment plan, the design of Station 20 site seeks to establish clear pathways, form active connections and harmonise architecture and landscape.

Site

The sites linear structure is inspired by the pattern and scale of the neighbouring high-density housing blocks of the Druzhba residential quarter. The angular direction of the landscape reflects the natural structure of the site boundary, generating a visual language that informs the division of public spaces and creates pathways, guiding pedestrian flow to and from the station.

Architecture

Main entry to Station 20’s underground concourse level is accessed via a vast corner plaza, providing a public space for circulation between the station services and the existing bus service infrastructure. The sweeping canopy of the entrance hall emerges out of the landscape as a wave, simultaneously pulling the structure up as it pushes the plaza down into the ground to meet with the level of the concourse. Finely cast steel elements with a non-flammable canvas lining stretched underneath, create an elegant structure and a glowing interior, achieved through concealed and integrated lighting.

Concourse

In response to the 120,000 daily flow of passengers, the stations concourse level has been extended to accommodate the maximum passenger loads expected, thus reducing congestion through passenger control systems. Visual connection from all entrances into the halls have been optimised to promote passenger safety, assist station security and maximise natural light.

The concourse is further extended to include a shopping court, capitalising on high passenger flows, whilst providing future potential for an underpass connection from the station to the planned adjacent shopping centre development.

Station 20 Sofia – Building Information

Title: STATION 20
Programme: New Metro Station 20 on Metro Line 1 in Sofia, Bulgaria International Competition, 2011
Client: Sofia Capital Muncipality, Architecture and Urban Spatial Development Service, 5 Serdika Str, Sofia 1000, Bulgaria
Competition team: Peter Ruge Architekten Peter Ruge, Kayoko Uchiyama, Matthias Matschewski, Alison McNicol, Hyesook Ahn, Duan Fu

Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Brief: Design of the new Metro Station 20 on Metro Line 1, including public spaces and landscape design
Scope of services: Open international competition
Size: Site: 12, 390 sqm, GFA: 2,430 sqm

Station 20 Sofia images / information from Peter Ruge Architekten

Peter Ruge Architekten

Location: Sofia, Bulgaria, southeastern Europe