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Architects: Ábalos + Sentkiewicz arquitectos
- Area: 701376 ft²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Juan Carlos Esteban, José Hevia, Jesús Rocandio, Maria Cruz Gutiérrez
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Lead Architects: Iñaki Ábalos, Renata Sentkiewicz (Abalos+Sentkiewicz AS+)
Text description provided by the architects. The Logroño Intermodal Station project is the result of international competition. The AS+ proposal sought to take advantage of the burying of the train as it passed through the city to sew a spatially segregated urban fabric, proposing a positive reading of the city and its natural support, beyond the program of a train and bus station.
This urban project is an example of sustainable urbanism and circularity. Our proposal established as a first requirement to use this urban operation to generate a large public space that would balance as much as possible the historical centrality, generating a new pole of attraction to the south of the city. The idea that, instead of being limited to building an architectural object that would respond to an infrastructural need, efforts would be concentrated on removing barriers and generating a natural public space allowed for projecting urban centrality. The replacement of a physical and therefore social barrier by a Park that unites two previously separated sides has generated great attraction and novelty to live in the area and has promoted the social balance between north and south as well as an important real estate development around it.
The project started when it was learned that Logroño has a large underground irrigation system from the Ebro. A quality that led to the creation of a large green space for citizens. The green roof that is created over the infrastructure serves as thermal insulation for the stations, which allows not only a great economy of maintenance of these spaces but also a hygrothermal balance against climate change. The park, for its part, integrates drainage systems that collect rain and excess irrigation for 100% reuse. This, together with irrigation through the different underground channels that exist in the city, translates into a large surface area for air purification and a great increase in biodiversity, which restores a natural condition to the urban environment.
While the design of the Train Station focuses on the transition from the access to the platforms, the Bus Station, with its typical horseshoe shape, emphasizes in the waiting room the contact with the park on its roof through a staircase that seeks light and polarizes all space. The Train Station and the Bus Station are connected under that great urban dome with a span of 60 meters. This dome arose as a resource to give continuity to the upper park without interrupting the road that connects the stations with the center of Logroño and with the exit to the peripheral highways. The result is a monumental-scale public space that celebrates urban and territorial connectivity and gives identity to new urban growth.
The complex was certified in 2022 with the international sustainability standard BREEAM Spain - Urbanism, becoming the second project to achieve recognition of this environmental quality seal in Spain. The park has also been systematically used by different international artists for artistic installations.
