| Client | City of Vilnius, Lithuania |
|---|---|
| Location | Vilnius, LT |
| Scale | 42000 m2 |
The urban redevelopment zone of the Vilnius train station is a strategic part of the City with enormous visual and commercial potential. Analogous to parts of many European cities, which have planned and implemented successful regeneration projects, the Naujininkai district is a large area for urban expansion, ideally juxtaposed tangent to the central railway station, still in the heart of the City.
Modern travel, or urban transit, is about movement energies, about passing moments in time and space, where thousands of people have fleeting, exciting and often inspiring moments of interaction. A visionary redevelopment such as the Vilnius Train Station District must, in our opinion, have a clear and intelligent identity. It needs to communicate a universal, but culturally relevant identity of an inspiring, ambitious city of the future. We see an organised, rational beauty in its opennes, sophistication and experimental qualities.
Conceptually, physically and metaphorically, the new Vilnius central train station we propose is, in fact, a bridge – the concourse spans almost effortlessly the platforms, carries the concourse above, and, ultimately, connects to the new development zone into the Naujininkai district. It is at once full of ‘lightness’, while it simultaneously conveying a remarkable triangulated ‘stability’. It is for us experientially about ‘levitating’ people, with a powerful sense of timelessness and permanence in an iconic, memorable space.
The hyper-roof is the ultimate visual symbol of the 21st Century railway station - as a ‘hub’, and a universal connector of people and commerce. It speaks of a ‘great hall’, of many people, of the shape and trajectory of trains, and, mostly, of the future of modern movement.