Aedas has won an international competition to design Shenzhen's new Qingshuihe Comprehensive Transportation Hub in a joint venture with China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group Co., LTD and Shenzhen Urban Transport Planning Center Co., LTD. The master plan draws inspiration from the natural environment of the area, integrating nature and water elements into the high-density city to build a unique new emblem for Qingshuihe. The underground compact hub releases large above-ground spaces which will feature urban terraces, offices, five-star hotels, first-rate apartments, science and technology exhibition halls, and other facilities.
Expected to be complete in 2025, the 2,195,000 sqm project is set to become a major transportation hub in Shenzhen with 4 urban rails, 1 intercity line, 1 high-speed rail line and various ground transportation. The station will feature daylight atriums, which serve as guidance for passengers towards the exit hall or waiting area. It will also include an opened sunken plaza and outdoor public platform, offering passengers a recreational space while waiting for bus transfer.
The design merges station-city road, rail traffic, and public spaces to establish a seamless connection between urban and traffic functions. The design blurs the physical boundary between architecture and nature with duckweed floating around the rippled structures, intimating the close relationship between the Qingshuihe hub station and city and liberating an area once isolated by mountains, roads, and railways. The main challenge of the design process was to balance the dynamic between developments and the crisscrossing traffic network to ensure an efficient travel experience.
The team designed a three-dimensional slow-moving system that ties the underground station buildings, B1, the urban public spaces on ground level, and commercial developments above-ground, elevating the idea of integrated, coordinated design. To ensure synchronicity of station entry, the atriums are used as index structures with high-speed rail and intercity platforms below, connecting the automobile traffic on its west and concentrating the subway arrangement on the east. The first underground floor is the exit floor whereas the second is the distribution layer. The inbound and outbound pedestrian flow is separated to avoid the crossing of moving lines. Via ground level and first basement, urban vehicle traffic and subways converge onto the second basement level, where it is possible to transfer to subways and national railways. The circulation between the high-speed rail and the subway is a pivotal consideration, so the team allocated the subway with the largest transfer scale near the hub on the third basement to maximize transfer efficiency.
This is not just the construction of a high-speed rail station, but an urban district renewal. We hope to build Qingshuihe into a super hub city with a high degree of integration. The core areas are integrated into the slow traffic network of the Qingshuihe Hub to realize the coordination of the urban and the hub functions. -- Leon Liang, Design Director
Late 2021, Aedas revealed plans to transform the Pragati Maidan, an important civic space in New Delhi, into an exhibition and convention centre intended as a new city icon. Located on the banks of Yamuna River nearby a series of cultural and historical venues, Aedas’ and Arcop’s winning project proposes a circular convention center framed by an extensive landscaped public space that capitalizes on accessibility.
