Paris based INFLUX_STUDIO has shared with ArchDaily their design proposal for the “Connecting Cleveland” urban strategy, a multimodal center built into the infrastructure fabric of the city’s lakefront. Additional images of their strategy and a outline of their conceptualization after the break.
Our proposal explores the value of a mobility infrastructure as a design opportunity to catalyze the urban potential of the site, hybridizing infrastructure with landscape and ecology. The Lakefront Station represent by its strategic position in Cleveland, a great opportunity to create a metropolitan interface linking the historical vision of the Mall with the future looking towards Lake Erie.
Supporting the “Connecting Cleveland” urban strategy, the project link downtown’s Mall (Medical Market and Convention center) with the isolated waterfront’s attractions (Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), creating a dynamic spot attractive for a very wider public.
The roof of the station becomes a part of the landscape; it is designed as a raised continuation of the Mall, its architecture takes as inspiration the strength and elegance of railways junctions, or railroad yards plans. This “cleveland” creates cross functional relations between different Lakefront facilities and the Multimodal hub and the Mall, while establishing a primarily pedestrian platform for new mixed-use developments, including retail, leisure, outdoors performances etc.
The shape of these “smart surface” will be double oriented, in terms to provide views and a noble facade both, to the Mall and to the Lakefront. The highest section of the train hall’s canopy does not exceed the height of the upper Mall (650 ft) Thus, preserving the view from the historic downtown to the Lake. The chosen strategy provides several possibilities to integrate into the green roof-terrace canopy, an energy harvesting system (solar pv) and a rainwater collector among many others green devices.
The main station hall is the nerve center of the complex. Linking different programs and levels, the hall provides a living dynamism and constitutes a vibrant transport hub, by a network of large scale voids that occupy the whole building, visitors and passengers climbing and descending escalators seeing each other, socializing in informal ways and spaces, coming from the convention center and Medical market, entering and exiting conferences, will bring a new urban experience at Lakefront Station, establishes a new city attractor for Cleveland.
The Lakefront Station will be a new icon for the city. At night a great spectacle take place at the Lakefront, the illumination of the slopes and the ribbons makes its contribution to redefine the new iconographic shape of 21st-century Cleveland. This new terrace, the “cleveland”, will provide a new urban place to make a pause and enjoy sightseeing providing extraordinary views toward the Lakefront and the Cleveland’s skyline.
Architects: INFLUX_STUDIO Location: Lakefront Station, Cleveland, Ohio, USA Client: The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative Site Area: 435600 sqft Project Area: 60000 sqft Project Year: 2009-2010
