Interconnexion

This year, for the first time in history, more than half of the planet's population will live in urban space. Specialists expect that before the year 2030, cities and towns will house up to 5 billion people, 60% of the world's population (information as of the United Nations).

Developing cities, such as Cairo, Lagos , Delhi, Bombay,beijing and Shanghai, are  perfect examples of cities with massive population increases, that best describe the migratory character of today's population. This same population become more and more involved in their relationship with the contemporary city and their centres. The "emerging" city, and its expanding suburbia, demonstrates the need for mobility in new poorly defined spaces, trapped between important historical centres and areas used by everybody everyday, such as commercial centres and leisure parks that have been planned to meet the demand, lacking in thought and harmony.

The main vector of this "globalisation" of the world and the city (Saskia Sassen), expresses itself through communication; all be it physical or virtual. The issue around the competition, around "the lignt of tomorrow"  inspired us to ask the first question: what are the new programmes of tomorrow? The station, a platform of multiple exchange in our contemporary society, we believe is the programme that is best suited to experiment with light. 

Materiality

Our concept is to treat light as a complex and uncertain matter, resembling an oil painting, uneven, raw, and built up in multiple layers. It is therefore in the depth and the "in betweens" of the project that the forever changing light best falls. In this atmosphere, a footprint of movement, a dialect is formed between the roof of the building and its environment. During the day, the light withholds a poetical relationship with the surroundings, showing all its qualities from refracted to transparent, through dynamic and diffused light. At night, light becomes more abstract to its surroundings, becoming a metaphor of the spontaneous modern world. This artificial light reflects the new global context, electronic / digital, immaterial, a substitute to the physical and rational city of the past. 

Sustainable

Solar power, linked with the dynamic qualities of the wind, enables the building to be self sufficient in energy. The various technical solutions envisaged for an energy efficient building through the experimentation with light, constitutes the most experimental aspect of the project. (The coriolis and venturi effect combined with solar power.).

Kinetic

The emphasis on the different flows (transportation, information/communication, economic, etc) by the forever changing light within the station, gives energy to the project which is aimed at helping the population appropriate the space.