Utrecht Station Square

Towards green mobility
The Dutch have always been fervent cyclists, to the extent that a substantial minority favours the combination of cycling and public transport over car use, clearly a preference to be encouraged if we hope to keep CO2 emissions to a minimum. But that requires infrastructure that promotes this more environmentally friendly means of transport. Luckily, no one understands this better than Utrecht City Council, representatives of a city that happens to boast the largest public transport hub in the Netherlands, and they couldn’t have been more committed to turning this vision into reality.

And thus began the transformation, in which the old Stationsstraat became “Stationsallee”, a pedestrianised street with a gentle curve that guides the eye to the new train station. Stairways lead to the level above, where the street opens out into a new, elevated public square that houses the entrances to the station and shopping mall. The square itself is spacious and airy. It includes terraces, landscaped sections and a circular fountain that offers itself as the most logical meeting point in the area, and whose shape echoes the curves that appear everywhere you look.

Utrecht's new landmark
The canopy provides a link between the station and the shopping centre, but also functions as a landmark of the station entrance, hence its commanding presence. Its design also had to preserve the airiness of the square, even in less than sunny weather. Our solution, a canopy with a honeycomb-like structure, each of its forty-nine cells housing an inflatable transparent cushion of ETFE foil measuring eight metres in diameter. These not only let sunlight through but also create a beautiful pattern of bright spots across the square. The monocoque steel frame in which the cushions reside is itself a technical marvel, with its combined virtues of lightness, strength and durability.

The project was realized through a series of co-design sessions that made it possible to include a considerable number of stakeholders in its execution. This was actually a necessity, as the project would involve altering all of the traffic flows at what happens to be the busiest public transport hub in the Netherlands while keeping the station fully operational. Of course, this occasionally resulted in some heated discussions, but their occurrence never caused delays or resulted in stalemates. The key to preventing this was the in-built flexibility of our design strategy, which involved thinking in terms of concepts and models for as long as possible and only fleshing out the design once we had across-the-board agreement.