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A group of leading French architects have denounced a plan to renovate the Gare du Nord, one of Paris’s main train stations, calling the designs that would turn the station into a glassy, mammoth, restaurant-filled shopping mall “indecent,” “absurd” and “unacceptable.” — The New York Times
Plans to drastically expand and modernize Paris's foremost train station were unveiled in 2018 with a commitment to meet the increased travel volume during the Olympic Summer Games in 2024 and cope with the more complex arrival procedures of British nationals in the post-Brexit era. An open letter... View full entry
This all makes what is happening now all the more remarkable. Last summer, Ford Motor Company announced it had bought the building, with plans to invest $740million to transform it into a world-leading research centre for ‘future mobility’. The very industry that signed the station’s death warrant in the first place is now set on resuscitating it as a beacon of sustainable transport. — The RIBA Journal
Oliver Wainwright pens a piece on the upcoming renovation of the Michigan Central Station, which was a celebrated icon of Detroit when it first opened in 1913. After the station closed in 1988 and was abandoned, it became the epitome of the city's ruin porn. After buying the building last summer... View full entry
Conceived to handle fewer than 200,000 passengers, the replacement Penn Station is today the busiest transit hub in the Western Hemisphere, through which more than 600,000 commuters pass each day — an experience as humiliating and bewildering as Grand Central remains inspiring and exalted. — The New York Times
NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman takes a look back at the triumphal arrival of the former Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead & White in 1910, its steady decline in the following decades, the consequential replacement with the current solution—a disappointing product of mid-century... View full entry
Following the construction of the first phase in 2015, the Mecanoo-designed Delft City Hall and Train Station is now fully completed, the Dutch firm recently announced. The 28,320 m2 project sits on top of a train tunnel, which replaced an old concrete viaduct that divided the city since... View full entry
Located about 7 miles north of Naples, the Napoli Afragola railway station designed by Zaha Hadid Architects has been operating for a year now. To mark the occasion, the firm released some new photos of the snake-like building taken by Hufton + Crow. As part of Italy's expanding high-speed rail... View full entry
France’s rail operator SNCF has unveiled plans to triple the size of Paris’ Gare du Nord station in time for the 2024 Olympic Games. [...]
The project, carried out in partnership with developer Ceetrus and architect Denis Valode of Valode et Pistre, will be the largest refurbishment of the station since it was built in 1864.
When complete it should increase the capacity of Europe’s largest station from 700,000 to 800,000 people a day.
— Global Construction Review
Image: Valode et Pistre.Besides accommodating an increase in travel volume during the 2024 Olympic Games, the dramatic expansion of Paris' Gare du Nord terminus station is also preparing necessary spaces for new arrival procedures of British nationals in the post-Brexit era: (soon) no longer EU... View full entry
Daniel Burnham’s ghost and his much-quoted exhortation to “make no little plans” haunt the just-released, utterly underwhelming design for a vertical expansion of Chicago’s Union Station.
To put things in Burnham-speak, these plans are little — very little.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of putting a 330-room hotel in the upper floors [...] The trouble is a planned apartment addition that would plunk a squat modernist box atop the existing structure’s neo-classical pedestal.
— Chicago Tribune
Tribune critic Blair Kamin comments on the latest expansion plans by Riverside Investment & Development for Chicago's iconic Union Station, which were unveiled Monday night. "The juxtaposition of past and present isn’t as violent as the spaceship-like seating bowl that’s plopped atop the... View full entry
Ford Motor Co. is in discussions to purchase the dilapidated Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood just outside of downtown, Crain's has learned from multiple sources familiar with the negotiations. — Crain's Detroit Business
"A redevelopment of the depot, which has been abandoned and blighted for three decades since Amtrak stopped service in 1988, would be one of the most expensive and complex local undertakings in recent history," Crain's reports. View full entry
I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined. — Bloomberg Businessweek
"As the gateway to America’s largest city," Devin Leonard writes in his piece for Bloomberg Businessweek, "Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the... View full entry
Time flies mercilessly, and another iconic example of contemporary architecture is already celebrating its 10th anniversary: designed by the late Dame Hadid and shortlisted for the 2008 RIBA Stirling Prize, the four stations of Innsbruck’s Nordpark Cable Railway opened to the public in December... View full entry
When built, Union Station was called the "Last of the Great Railway Stations." Designed by father and son team John and Donald B. Parkinson, the landmark opened in 1939 at a time when railway service was already beginning to wane. Combining Art Deco, Spanish Colonial, and Mission Revival styles... View full entry
Talk about redeveloping the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown area heated up again Thursday during an announcement about this year's Detroit Homecoming, which will hold the first significant private event in the 104-year-old train station since the mid-1980s. [...]
"(Redevelopment of) the depot is going to take a marathon, but we're not at the beginning of the race, we're a few miles into it," said Matthew Moroun, whose father, Matty, bought the building in 1995.
— crainsdetroit.com
"I said, 'there's one thing: Every time I read a damn national story about Detroit, there's a picture of the train station with the holes in the windows as the international image of the city's decline,'" Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is quoted saying, recalling his conversation with billionaire... View full entry
Conway confirmed what several mathematicians have noticed since the station’s unveiling: the pattern on the façade follows the logic not of Conway’s Life but of Wolfram’s Rule 30, a different cellular automaton identified by the computer scientist Stephen Wolfram. — Quartz Media
Atkins designed £50m Cambridge North railway station, a 4,843 sq ft building with three platforms and parking, opened this May.Its aluminum façade was inspired by The Game of Life, a cellular automaton that a British mathematician John Horton Conway developed in 1970. Conway, nevertheless... View full entry
After 19 years, the Arnhem Central Station masterplan will finally be complete with the public opening of the new transfer hall tomorrow. Since UNStudio won the competition in 1996, the journey to construct the urban development in the Dutch city of Arnhem was an arduous one filled with “an... View full entry
It's been over 50 years, but for many, the destruction of Charles Follen McKim's original Pennsylvania Station still stings (hey, even Mad Men mourned its passing). But now, there is a hopeful (if improbable) plan from Richard W. Cameron—principal designer at Atelier & Co—to bring back the civic jewel of a long-gone New York.
According to Traditional Building's's Clem Labine, Cameron's plan has three main goals [...]."
— ny.curbed.com
Previously View full entry
