Central Station Stuttgart / Christoph Ingenhoven
The plan seeks to give Stuttgart 21 new public spaces in the city and improve the infrastructure of railways, mainly through a new underground station, a project of the German Christoph Ingenhoven of Ingenhoven und Partner Architeckten, Dusseldorf (Germany). As a good German, this project presents an in-depth work in pursuit of sustainability, not only in terms of energy savings, but also by the management, creation of new parks and the integration of the existing urban fabric and old buildings, which made him winner of the Holcim Awards Gold 2006, rewarding the best sustainable construction projects worldwide and as well as this project was in development since 1997 and was won, whichever is developing proposals sustainable in any scale may be submitted to this competition, which for the 2007/2008 version distributed $ 2 million USD in prizes.
The old and new city were separated by railway lines, but to sink all that infrastructure, both areas of the city are connected, giving new opportunities for leisure activities and interaction between people from different groups.
Land resulting from the underground routes and underground station generates 100 hectares of new public spaces, next to a park that connects downtown to the river Nekar.
One of the essential parts of the project is its concrete deck, developed in collaboration with Ingenhoven Fred Otto and structural engineers. The station has a length of 420 m, a width of 80 m and a height of 12 m. The cover is as slim as possible, with a thickness of only 35 cm, the time working to understand, which makes the need for steel support is minimal. This ensures another objective of the project is to reduce the amount of material used.
The deck that connects the city by creating a new public space is divided into 28 modules based on a kind of sustained calyces with a tunnel at the base and a skylight at the top, giving the station an underground natural lighting. These skylights have systems to monitor the incidence of sunlight and ventilation, and thus the temperature inside.
This system has a tremendous engineering process behind allowing 14 hours of continuous daylight, saving energy.
If you want to know more about the Holcim Awards and participate, they can read this article or go directly to the step by step guide on how to apply.