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Bachelor ThesisERIK HEDBORG

2014-05Project: VästlänkenSite: Korsvägen

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AbstractThe Västlänken project is designed to solve a regional and national problem of transportation. I started my project with the ambition to look at what added qualities it could give the urban landscape and it’s citizens. By setting up a series of design patterns, and trying to stay true to these in different levels of scale, I could get a grasp of the project as a whole.

Sketching out the problem, I arrived at a decision to let the entrances step out from the middle of the site and define a public place in between. To not have one tramway going right past the entrances, I rearranged it to go with the others. To relieve the flow of traffic, I instead looked at the option of letting buses dock right with the mezzanine.

To give these public places a character, I chose to work with the station as the profane version of the religious space. The large scale infrastructure projects of today are huge investments from society which will be active for a long time, and the aesthetics are to remind us of our place in time and culture.

After sketching by physical model and figuring out that I could have changes in structure to correspond to changes in flows of people and of program, I worked with Rhino5 and the plug in Grasshopper to create a script which connected a series of dots with arches. To let daylight through, a voronai pattern was established around the columns which further articulates directions created with the space between them.

The entrance roofs rest like lids out of glass and steel on top of openings which get their shape from escalators and an idea of being able to see the sky from the platforms. The idea was to use vector active structure to get a maximum of glass surface.

In the end, the project explores and looks at one way to create public space that is poetic and calm in the demanding and very technical context of an underground station.

A lot of things did not turn out as expected. The shape of the public square on top was too difficult to design just from scratch and i had to seek reference to the structure I created down below.

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Introduction

Large scale infrastructure projects are amongst the most extreme things we do as societies. We cut, drill and blast away rock. We dredge the sea and dig the earth, we can move mountains if we want to.

To me, this induces both the feeling of awe and of fascination. That the society has decided to put a huge amount of money on something that long time of an investment shows a working structure and a faith in the collective. In a video game sensical way the city is levelling up.

However, I can also see how all this is disturbing. How a society that needs growing and expanding to survive, and how everything, even people and their work, becomes competition in a globalized world.

My studio will be working with Korsvägen, in central Gothenburg. The translation is “The crossroads” and it is a place where many different types of urban fabric meet.

One thing that I think is really important to work with are the qualities that the station can give public life in this place, so that it doesn’t just become a series of numbers in a spreadsheet - travellers, trains, ventilation duct space and so on.

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Digital and physical modellingIn the beginning of a project, getting to learn the site is to me the most important job. Preparing the digital model with all of it’s consistent gis information helps me to start thinking about the design problem at hand, and is a job that needs to be done eventually anyway.

We also created a big 1:400 physical model of korsvägen with replaceable pads together in the studio. This i used to sketch in with different materials. However, in hindsight, it was a little too overworked.

Rhino 5

Sketchup

Physical model 1:400

Solid wood, cardboard, steel wire

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Design PatternsI believe that being able to talk about a design in a direct and straight forward fashion is important. In what extent can a design be described in words? How can we talk about problems and solutions in a way that opens to a lot of different variety of good but closes us off to what’s bad?

The Tyranny of The regionThe paradox of susTainable developmenTbig spacesThe enTrance of goThenburgTaking care of The landscapeconTinuous ciTyscapeconvex public shapehousing hillThe rubbing of shouldersdifferenT people, differenT needsreadable and undersTandable paThsThe arT of waiTingThe invisible archiTecTurea place To workeveryday lifebeing close To someThing greennaTural lighTgood maTerials

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The Tyranny of The region

Västlänken is a large scale project, of importance for Sweden as a whole and the region. However, there is a danger that the city will not get as much out of it.

The västlänken project is a way to extend the metropolitan area of Gothenburg. It is a multi million sek project to move people in and out of the city, not to move people within the city. To the city, more people working is admittedly not a bad thing. But the increase in traffic may choke local transport systems, the construction will tear up the cityscape for several years, and not much quality to the everyday life might be gained.

i want to focus on synergy effects where the region and the cites interests cross, as in the good public spaces around the entrances.

The paradox of susTainable developmenT

All large scale projects claiming to work towards a sustainable development face the same problem: they almost always do more harm than good.

Oh, and carbon build up and global warming is of course not the only environmental threat we’re facing.

The västlänken project has the potential to make most of the inner city of gothenburg free from cars. To gain a net positive carbon impact on the planet, the activity and structure of everyday travel must change.

big spaces

Huge public squares can feel extremely empty and windy, but they serve an important democratic function.

i think that there are two ways to deal with big space. either i’ll divide it, creating smaller areas within it, creating human scaled subspaces that are easy to appropriate. or, i’ll open it up mainly undisturbed, make it a place for public gatherings with a focus point placed roughly in the middle for the sake of orientation.

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The enTrance of goThenburg

The stations is where visitors coming by train (and later on, perhaps plane) will arrive to Gothenburg. Making this a pleasant thing is important.

seeing some focus point or landmark to orient by is a must. perhaps a sight line towards liseberg, or gothia towers. A first time visitor should face positive public space and easily understandable public transport.

Taking care of The landscape

The MKB of västlänken project is a 100 pages long. The short version is that while positive for the region, it can be negative for the city.

We need to talk about the ecological and cultural landscape of Gothenburg.

The preservation of the landeri close to our site is important.

conTinuous ciTyscape

The current development of the area around korsvägen is detrimental to urban life.

Big buildings are made to be appreciated from high speeds. When walking through the city, the stimuli of experience must come at a much closer interval, something a huge monolithic facade cannot satisfy.

big buildings need to have a good connection with the ground level that activates the city at the pace of a pedestrian.

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housing hill

Where to live, where to work?

Traditionally, hillsides have been built for livable space to free up agrecultural space in the valleys between them. Nowadays, the flat space in between hills are built upon just as much. However, i think that it is a positive image of a city to build housing hills. Or its just a way for me to think about campus näckrosdammen.

let campus näckrosen be a frame and backdrop for korsvägen, with stairs and paths between buildings.

convex public shape

Many of the great historical public spaces are just open areas surrounded by buildings.

The first Agoras were just a big open plane defined by surrounding buildings.

To me, that the building scale is large around korsvägen, is not a reason for a new large structure in the middle. It is the shape between buildings, and in this case, hills that will have to decide the final shape of the station.

I want to avoid creating undefined space by placing large solitaries out in the open. instead, i will make spaces framed by buildings, sized for the social event that will take place there.

The rubbing of shoulders

Social sustainability is tricky. Increased integration of people is desirable, but the situation is spatially hard to accomplish. With the risk of oversimplifying - the lesser socio-economically strong live in the north-eastern suburbs, the richer middle and upper middle class live in the city and sprawl like suburbs to the west.

Since we cannot, and probably don’t want to, force people to move, public space in the city is where this integration and mix must happen.

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differenT people, differenT needs

If you design for the average, half of the population would hit their head in the door frame when entering. Our public space will be used by the elderly, the disabled and by children. It will be used by people that are social and anti-social. It will be used by tourists and locals, by travellers and commuters. Some will always

The disabled needs space for wheelchairs, the blind needs tactile paths in the flooring. But everybody needs During initial studies of the Nils Ericson Terminal, many groups came to the conclusion that thermal comfort, the acoustics and good orientation were three important factors for a pleasant environment. Good zoning, where functions are separated within the same room, allows for both the fast paced commuter and the tourist taking a rest. Lena Hopsh reminded us of a quote by Juhani Pallasmaa, and I’ll paraphrase:

“Design for the human when she is at her weakest and most vulnerable condition.”

make sure that all doors and paths have clear contrast from walls and less important space. make sure that waiting spots have a good thermal comfort, that they are not regularly interrupted by a gust of cool air. arrange something for the children to play with or explore - a well observable nest of benches from the eyes of an adult can be a labyrinth of wonders for the child.

readable and undersTandable paThs

The mental map is quite a powerful tool. Avoid paths that will confuse it.

if you go north, you should end up north. all changes in pathing should stand out with some sort of marker - a difference in material or colour, or a pool of natural light, or a drinking fountain. There should be clear typologies and repeating elements for a traveller to attach meaning to.

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The arT of waiTing

Waiting is an interesting activity. Passive and active at the same time, nobody shuts oneself off for a given amount of time.

Some people choose to close themselves in, with books or smartphones filled with different media. Some people connect to their social life online, through facebook and twitter. These want an undisturbed place with good comfort. The alignment is not important as long as you can, by lifting your gaze from your lap, monitor train or bus information easely.

The invisible archiTecTure

The invisible architecture is consistent of all different senses, sound, smell, touch (tactile & thermal). My take on it is that the sound and thermal comfort of a room is the most essential features for physiological well being, but the others are also important.

Only rooms for music listening should have an reverberation time over 1 sec. We must avoid spaces with frequent changes in temperature. In closed space, this is accomplished by increasing the amount of absorbent material compared to room volume. In open space, this is more complicated.

The thermal comfort is affected by the surrounding temperature, radiated temperature, humidity, and the wind speed (rate of cooling/heating). Actually air temperature is not as important as the other factors. Think of a calm spring day - the air is cool but the sun feels warm.

design spaces with lots of absorbing materials, with places sheltered from the wind facing the sun. indoor spaces should if possible be heated by radiation, not by hot air, and places close to entrances where gusts can come in should be avoided.

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a place To work

It is easy to forget that the stations will be a workplace for many.

make sure there are a lot of tucked in “extra space” evenly distributed throughout the station, to store tools and equipment.

everyday life

The amenities and services of the train station is not always a benefit for the daily commuter. The long distant traveller might want a lounge, a restaurant or shopping, but the daily commuter wants to streamline their day.

make the path from the trains to the connecting public transport system as streamlined and effective as possible. line it with grocery stores, the quick espresso bar and take out food. put eventual restaurants and cafés in separate but connected spaces.

being close To someThing green

A lot of studies show that there is an inherent biological affinity for the natural environment in people. However, parks and large green space are great at day but can be unsafe at night.

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good maTerials

If we jump too swiftly to adapt a new material technology, it might age or wear in an unsatisfying way , and . If we totally rely on traditional materials, the result will be unnecessarily expensive and un

“The study of materials is clearly the foundation of architecture” - John Ruskin

Not only is choice of material important, but also how it is detailed into a building.

naTural lighT

daylight should penetrate deep down the station, and mark exits, a natural sign that will make the station feel safer and easy to orient oneself in.

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I’m interested in creating a station with the off result of a great public square for Gothenburg. The square should contain trees, some focal point, but mainly general use area. The square is trafficked only by trams, buses and private cars have to go down to the lower level.

The entrances shall be connected to the hills on either side of the square, with a mezzanine level between them. The mezzanine should be daylight lit through lanternines.

The aesthetics should tell a story about being underground, and of the long time period of which the station will be operational. The columns will be a powerful aesthetic tool.

The connection with campus näckrosdammen is important and the station entrance can be a part of it.

How can one divide the space? Is it only just dividable as a triangle? How does it work for, car, buses, trams, bikes, pedestrians? Can the order be changed?

Summary of design choices

Making sense of the order

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Solitares out in the open space is non-directional and creates a lot of antispace around them.

Lining the site with buildings however, creates well defined space with no unintentional back side.

New location of the entrances

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To achive convex outdoor space, the entrances cannot be placed on the inside of the tramtracks. This leads to some of problems for traffic safety, and the flow of pedestrians that need to cross them. I’ll solve it by removing the western shorcut the tram makes . This is the least trafficated passage, and by moving a lot of buses under ground, i can free up walkable space west of the main tram platorms.

The flow must work below the ground aswell. The east surface-mezzanine (buses) - platform connection works really well, i think, but the west is harder to accomplice since the changes in direction becomes more abrupt.

Got the flow?

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It’s all about patternsThe penrose tiling are patterns of five-fold symmetry. Classically not allowed as a tiled pattern, by sacrificing some rules of a 100% transferable pattern, a lot of other fascinating features appear.

I’m speculating on if I can use it as a stone tiling for the public space. The pattern is quite beautiful, has a lot of easy logic, but appears really complex.

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Getting daylight through & column design problemsEither I’ll put two cantilever pillars next to each others, and make the space between as thin as possible and make an opening to the surface there, or I’ll make the pillars hollow and the surrounding areas as thick as possible, to get light down the inside of the columns.

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Grid, logic, repititon.The placment and shape of pillars should be coordinated with the movement of the interior station, and the way that the forces transfer throughout the structure. I’ve been sketching on ways to change the logical order both within the different planes but also in a vertical sense. The structure is probably the most important space-making choice, and different designs will have effects that make the spaces feel lika a place to move through, stay, at ease, profane or religous, in awe or included et cetera.

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Grid, logic, repititon. Referenceshollow pillars, lighT coming Through middle

canTilever pillars, lighT coming from around

lighT Through maTerial esTeThics

Elado Dieste

Nervi Thomas HerzogFrank Lloyd Wright

Student project Minoru Nomata (artist)

Toyo Ito Frei Otto

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Korsvägen Brunnsparken

Rådhusplassen Kiev square

Times square Trafalgar square

Comparison squares

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Parametric adaptabilityInstead of moving and sorting the columns by hand, I thought of using Grasshopper to do it for me. I never used it before but the layout was quite easy to understand and after a little tinkering I could make a series of points become arches connecting to each other and adjusting their curve to start and end tangently (biarc).

The model keeps growing and growing. I think this model will solve my problems with connection of grids and column spacing and loads. From the grasshopper script I also had my daylight structure fixed - using a voronai pattern to enclose all the columns in connected polygons.

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I have this spot which could be a great place for a landmark. It would be the place to find a person you’re meeting. It would be something to orient by when you are new in the city. In above studies I’ve represented it with an obelisk. In a real project, perhaps one would hire an artist to create something there.

Adding some sort of focus point

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A small touch of urban planningLooking at the plans which exist for the slope up towards Näckrosdammen, I was not very happy. Highrise massive blocks taking out the evening sun, totally overwhelming the Johanneberg Landeri. My own sketch is a stepping city block, with a thicker, public building next to a big set of outdoor stairs.

Plans from akademiska hus (view from north)

My suggestion (view from east)

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Transferring loads to the groundI have made a grasshopper program that will connect and arch columns for each floor according to a set of rules. However, that will not account for the different placements of columns on the different levels, and the loads of the upper level. I have tried to rearrange them so they still stick to the plan, the hallways and the spaces that is, but either sits on top of another column, or forms a two, tree or four way symmetry with the column on the lower floor.

I am aware of the fact that the thickness of the slabs are quite thick, and that the service ducts can act like enormous beams spanning in the direction of the tracks. So there is a lot to play with. Still, its a lot of weight on top, and we want that weight so that the concrete box which is lowered in the clay will not float upwards. If I would have been aware of the service ducts and their construction earlier in my project I would probably have done some things a bit differently.

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Sketching out the traffic planI really didn’t want this step to take time from my project, but i wanted to be able to speak for my decision to locate buses underground. The slope up towards campus näckrosdammen was excellent to start changing elevations for the exit up towards Eklandagatan and down towards the bus terminal and later on the continuation of Södra vägen.

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The last piece of the puzzleSaving the entrances for last, they turned out to be quite difficult to design into something presentable. Since they become the interface between two different types of space - the open air, “public square, and the more dimly lit “church” like structures below, something different had to be done. In the end, I turned an arch upside down and used it both as a wall and also as a beam.

I created a model and used it to sketch in. Later, the same model was to be my final presentation model.

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Building the modelThe laser cutter was totally booked up but i managed to get one quarter of an hour from a friend who didn’t need all his booked time. I cut the arches out of cardboard because of the limited time - otherwise i would have gone with plywood. These were the pieces that I necessarily needed to cut digitally since they come all individually shaped from grasshopper. The rest of the model i could build with old fashoned sawing and abresive shaping.

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The interface between clay and rockWhen coming down the west most escalators, you come directly down the rock tunnel which the western part of the station is made of underneath näckrosdammen. This is also a place where the car tunnel cross very closly and a concrete tube sways off to attach to eklandagatan. This is an enormous oppertunity to work with an awsome space that can be open to different levels, different types of construction, different flows. Unfortunatly, when installations and services come into play, a lot of that view gets covered by by huge concrete structures.

Surprise number two:fire safetyPositivly ignoring in my design, all the staircases need to be separated and pressurised to not let in any smoke during the event of a train entering the station on fire, or similar accidents. The openings i’ve suggested between the different levels adds another level of complexity to this problem. Taking on one battle - with the installation ducts, i chose to keep my staircases open for the sake of this practice with the open and airy space around the entrances.

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The arches of the surface acts as space for waiting and staying, and the spaces between as space for moving in.

During the night, the roles change and the station gets to illuminate the surface.

Night and day

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BICYCLE RAMP

JOHANNEBERGSLANDERI

PUBLIC BUILDING

ART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTUREART/SCULPTURE

The above ground plan is only designed very schematicly at this stage. The idea is to create good balance between general space, weather protection and waiting, and flows of pedestrians, bikes and trams.

Plan above ground

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SEATING SPACE

BICY

CLE

PATH

BICY

CLE

PATH

BICY

CLE

PATH

BICY

CLE

PATH

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Section A-A

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BUS TERMINAL

LOADING BAY

SHOPS

MAIN HALL

BICYCLE GARAGE

BICYCLERAMP

TRAFFICTUNNEL

AA

The mezzanine plan

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BUS TERMINAL

LOADING BAY

SHOPS

MAIN HALL

BICYCLE GARAGE

BICYCLERAMP

TRAFFICTUNNEL

AA

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Elevation

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Renderings

View towards north eastern entrance

View down the main hall

View over the interface with the rock tunnel

Detail of slit

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12 Stone2 Sealant46 HEA-profile500 Concrete slab

Continuous reinforcementFrosted safety glass

Long life LED light

19 Hardened glass

Neoprene profile

Demountable stone tile for electrical work

The details describe how glass partitions are made. The goal is to hide the joints as much as possible and have frosted artifical lightning integrated with it.

Floor to column 1:5

Floor to glass pane 1:5

Details

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Neoprene profileStainless profile, cast in place

Stainless profile, cast in place

Neoprene profile

Glass pane to column, plan view 1:5

Glass pane to column 1:5

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Model pictures

South elevation

1:100 physical model in mdf, carbdboard, foam

North elevation

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View down the arches

Low wall facing south

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Trees framed by arches

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View from the mezzanin up towards the glass roof.

North elevation

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