Designed by Andrew Bromberg at Aedas, the terminus station of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link has opened to the public.
November 9th, 2018
Befitting its prominent site on Victoria Harbour, the new Hong Kong West Kowloon Station makes a strong formal gesture to express the speed and scale of the high-speed rail system of which it is a part.
Serving as the terminus of the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, it is the line’s only Hong Kong station. The Express Rail Link connects with China’s National High-Speed Rail network all the way to Beijing. The station handles passengers through border controls and has 400,000 square metres of usable floor area.
The fluid form of the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station, designed by Andrew Bromberg at Aedas, was a means of expressing the idea of various forces converging on a global city. Notably, the arcing, ground-hugging form – sweeping over a 45-metre-high internal volume – can be traversed by pedestrians. The landscaped roof offers new vantage points over the city.
“I have been working on this station for nearly ten years,” says Andrew Bromberg at Aedas, “and I cannot wait to see it teeming with people.”
The internal volume is directed toward the south facade, with views focusing on the Hong Kong Central skyline and Victoria Peak beyond. With the station serving as the gateway to Hong Kong, Bromberg considered it vital that it would connect with the surrounding urban context and make arriving or departing passengers aware that ‘I am in Hong Kong’.
The interior of the main hall is washed by natural light that streams in through 4,000 glass panels and a floating roof supported by leaning, tree-like columns. Long curving apertures admit light with consistency across the main departure hall.
The station is the first major construction project to be completed in the upcoming West Kowloon Cultural District. Seven footbridges and two pedestrian subways connect the station with the local transport network and nearby developments. The development itself offers over three hectares of ‘green plaza’ to its site and people are encouraged to walk into the station’s roof, which reached a height of 25 metres above ground level.
At its lowest point, the station reached 25 metres underground. Hong Kong West Kowloon Station incorporates 15 tracks below ground, nine long-haul tracks and six shuttle tracks. Travel time to the major business areas of the city, such as Central, is around 15 minutes.
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
Schneider Electric’s new range are making bulky outlets a thing of the past with the new UNICA X collection.
Gaggenau’s understated appliance fuses a carefully calibrated aesthetic of deliberate subtraction with an intuitive dynamism of culinary fluidity, unveiling a delightfully unrestricted spectrum of high-performing creativity.
It’s widely accepted that nature – the original, most accomplished design blueprint – cannot be improved upon. But the exclusive Crypton Leather range proves that it can undoubtedly be enhanced, augmented and extended, signalling a new era of limitless organic materiality.
The 19th International Architecture Biennale has been on in Venice and Grimshaw’s latest installation explores the civic role of digital infrastructure in our cities.
Tilt Industrial Design’s work on this Western Sydney logistics hub with Mirvac and SBA Architects stands out for its blending of function and aesthetics.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
In a market saturated with sameness, Studio P3 set out to raise the bar, creating four refined speculative suites for Mirvac in Sydney, with Milliken flooring playing an essential role in realising a space with broad appeal – all underpinned by a commitment to sustainability.
A new $67.6 million facility at Chisholm Institute’s Frankston campus in Victoria marks a shift in how vocational education is delivered in Australia.