The Logroño Intermodal Station at the Melbourne Design Week Congress

The University of Melbourne

The Logroño Intermodal Station at the Melbourne Design Week Congress

…Another project from Madrid architects Abalos+Sentkiewicz envisions moving away from hermetically sealed climate-controlled buildings and creating ‘thermodynamic beauties’ . Through their work, the architects have developed an expertise in the formal, material and organisational aspects of a building which support a more thoughtful approach to the thermodynamic behaviour of a building. Their projects for the Logrono train station and Sorigue Foundation offer elegant and novel built forms, where the aesthetics of the projects are combined with a highly sophisticated understanding of achieving thermal comfort instead of the more conventional emphasis on visual attributes…

The AS+ proposal was awarded first prize in an important international competition due to the green belt proposal resulting from burying the train tracks and stitching up a previously socially segregated urban context. The result is a new green pedestrian circuit in which the stations are not iconic objects -more or less «original»- but a «hill» or watchtower, a viewpoint of the city and its natural environment.

Both stations acquire their own character as «public grottos» easily associated with the multiple wineries present in the area (La Rioja). Thanks to a well-organized management, the complex was carried out in accordance with the initial budgets. The urban park that is created on its roof sews north and southern parts of the city, providing a central space to the new residential neighborhood that gravitates around it.

The Train Station and the Bus Station are connected under a large 60-meters span urban dome. The Train Station and underground platforms were built between 2010 and 2013; The Bus Station between 2017 and 2020, and the Dome that links them creating a great urban gateway in 2020. While the design of the Train Station focuses on the transition of access to the platforms, the Bus Station, with its typical horseshoe-like shape, emphasizes the connection between the waiting room and the park on its deck through a staircase that seeks the light and polarizes the entire space.