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Jiaxing is a historic city located 60 miles southwest of Shanghai. There, MAD Architects, founded by Ma Yansong (with offices in Beijing, Rome, Jiaxing and Los Angeles), completed a new train station, marking the studio’s first transportation infrastructure reconstruction and expansion project.
MAD Architects was tasked with replacing a dysfunctional train station that operated in Jiaxing between 1995 and 2019. At just 43,000 square feet, the abandoned station is too small for a city of 1.4 million people and counting. Designed to facilitate the development of the rapidly expanding city, the new train station’s design is emblematic of what the avant-garde experimental studio is all about.
“We should rethink and define the spatial pattern of this type of transportation infrastructure construction in China,” Ma Yansong said after the station was completed. “We can get rid of people’s common pursuit of magnificent monumental buildings and turn them into urban public spaces with transportation functions, natural ecology and cultural life, so that citizens can enjoy going, living, meeting and having fun.”
After the reconstruction, the railway station now has 6 lines and 3 platforms (the reconstruction in 1995 was 5 lines and 3 platforms), and there are 2 arrival and departure lines upstream and downstream. This new capacity will help the station accommodate 5 million people per year, with a capacity of 2,500 people per hour during peak times.
To innovate and iterate on the contemporary train stations being built in China today, MAD Architects looked to the past. The designers opted for a complete reconstruction of the original 1907 railway station, which preceded the second 1995 railway station. The rebuilt station used 210,000 red and green bricks made from mud from a nearby lake and other locally sourced materials.
The interior of the completely reconstructed 1907 station Keep the conversation going and stay true to the original design. The reconstructed station waiting hall, ceilings and tunnel walls are clad with anodized aluminum honeycomb panels. MAD says this will absorb excess noise. Above the reconstructed hub, MAD designated a A “floating” metal roof sits above the extension and is equipped with solar panels to power the station, the architects said.
The main transport and commercial functions of the new station – namely the entrance and exit platforms and the waiting hall – are hidden underground. MAD says this breaks with traditional station design thinking and gives rise to a new typology, what architects call “Forest Railway Station” design. By placing these key features below ground level, MAD planted more than 1,500 trees at street level, including beech, camphor, osmanthus, maple, sebifara, redwood, and cherry blossom.
“The spiritual axis contains the reconstructed 1907 building, planted with beech trees which, when fully formed, will form a canopy over the entire north square in front of the station,” said MAD.
The southern square contains seven buildings with different cultural and commercial uses, as well as a central lawn. In the future, the lawn will become a venue for outdoor events such as concerts and art festivals.
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