Jiaxing Train Station Park

In the past three decades, with rapid urbanization, many large train stations and high-speed rail stations have been built up in Chinese cities, surrounded by overpasses and huge plazas. The stations cut off urban fabric, and the surrounding areas are usually separated from nearby urban environment. The renewal of Jiaxing train station is a design practice of our partial landscape upgrading and partial new landscape design of a transportation hub in the old downtown and its surrounding areas, which is typical in China's urbanization and regional urban renewal. The challenge lies in the engulfing and fragmentation of urban public space by transportation hubs, broken and passive industrial land, large parking lots, etc. The low-end industrial mix and chaotic traffic around the station have been detrimental to the area that was once the city center. Given the complexity, we worked closely with design consultants across disciplines. The redesigned Jiaxing train station park is an urban oasis of 35.4 hectares encompassing the nearly 70-year-old People's Park, the North Plaza of forest, the landscape to the south of the station and the future park integrated with the TOD complex.

It transforms public municipal buildings and transportation hubs into integrated quality urban public space, retaining the unique culture of Jiaxing old town, combining the protection and upgrading of the old park with the newly built high-tech ecological future park, and maximizes green coverage, becoming a "platform connecting and traveling between the past and future". Passengers and citizens can not only experience and recall the history and culture of Jiaxing, but also admire the imagination of the future park. It is a symbol of the city, and enjoyed by the people, bringing back the vitality of the old town. This sets the standard for how Chinese cities can better preserve and build contemporary urban transit public spaces.

The People’s Park is the oldest public park of Jiaxing with 9 traditional pavilions and more than 50 of over 100-year old preserved trees. The design team recreates people’s park with great respect of all preserved elements and carefully design new things that perfectly blend with the old.

To make ground level more pedestrian friendly for passengers and visitors, entrances of train station are creatively located on B1 level to create a 34 hectares park above. Sunken courtyards connect the park with the new train station, while underground civic roads link the underground areas to bus terminals as well as a tramway, metro, car parking and taxi stands. With a long axis and great waterfall, there are 160 Zelkova trees on the forest plaza providing shade for passengers and seamlessly merge with the people’s park.

To make buildings look like floating traditional circular jades, the design team creates a large green-roof park for the southern part of the train station which is a mixed-use complex with hotel, retails, offices, tram and bus station. The green-roof park allows visitor to experience the unique undulating landform and overlook busy traffic of bullet trains.

Team:
Architect: Z’scape
Other participants: MAD, Tongji Architectural Design (Group) Co
Photography: Lubing

MAD Architects has completed Jiaxing Train Station, the firm’s first transportation infrastructure reconstruction and expansion project. Located at the center of Jiaxing, a historic city 100 kilometers southwest of Shanghai, the project replaces a dysfunctional train station that had stood at the site between 1995 and 2019. 

As the urbanization of China in recent years has recently developed, so too has the hardware and technology development related to transportation infrastructure. The corresponding transportation facilities buildings, such as railway stations and new airports, however, have not improved their spatial and architectural qualities at the same rate. Train stations have instead grown far beyond the human scale, standing like imposing palaces in Chinese city centers surrounded by wide main roads, viaducts, and vast empty squares.

In response to this common trend, MAD founding partner Ma Yansong advised that “we should rethink and redefine the spatial patterns of such transportation infrastructure buildings in China. We can break away from the common pursuit of grandiose monumental buildings and make them urban public spaces with transport functions, natural ecology and cultural life, where citizens are happy to go, stay, meet, and enjoy.”

A new sunken train station designed with a human scale
Jiaxing Train Station was first built in 1907 and was destroyed over half a century ago. The station that was constructed in 1995 to replace the original station had an area of only 4,000 square meters and was equipped with outdated passenger facilities unsuitable for a rapidly expanding city. 

MAD’s design breaks away from the usual pursuit of monumental transportation structures with a full-scale recreation of the original 1907 station, as well as a “floating” metal roof lofted above the expanded site equipped with solar panels that power the station. To pay tribute to the city’s history, architectural experts and scholars analyzed a large amount of historical data (much of which was located in the Jiaxing City Archives) to accurately reconstruct the old station house. The approximately 210,000 red and green bricks of the reconstructed station house are made of mud sourced from the nearby South Lake and other locally sourced materials. 

MAD envisioned a new station that would be both more humane and efficient than its predecessor. The overall design of the interior maintains a dialogue with the recreated 1907 station through a glass facade that clearly expresses the height difference of the two structures from the entrance. The minimalist interior is clad with anodized aluminum honeycomb panels in the waiting hall, ceiling, and tunnel walls that absorb excess noise, and is lit by flood lights rather than the usual top lighting. The exhaust vents, broadcasting system, and underpass light strips are all subtly embedded into the walls. 

The new station building’s entry and exit platforms, waiting halls (major transport and commercial functions) are almost entirely taken underground, thus breaking with traditional concepts and giving birth to the “train station in the forest” design. The renovated railway station has been expanded from three platforms and five lines to three platforms and six lines, with two arrival and departure lines on each of the upstream and downstream main lines. It is expected that by 2025, the full passenger capacity will reach 5.28 million people/year, with an hourly capacity of about 2,500 people at the peak of passenger traffic.

A variety of transport modes have been reorganized underground to efficiently interconnect throughout the entire system. The original traffic hub in front of the station has additionally been moved underground to connect with the sunken city roads to ensure convenient travel for citizens and tourists, as well as to meet the passenger demand generated by the creation of new commercial functions across the southern portion of the site.

An urban oasis for citizens
By placing the busy transport hub underground, MAD's design connects to and expands an existing park. Over 1,500 trees, including beech, camphor, osmanthus, maple, sebifera, sequoia, and cherry blossom were planted across the site. The spiritual axis, which contains the recreated 1907 building, is marked with beech trees that, when fully formed, will create a canopy across the entire north square in front of the station.

The south square contains seven buildings with different functions for culture and commerce, as well as a central lawn of about one hectare that are together shaped like rolling green hills. These functional spaces, scattered above and below the hills, appear as floating rings above the earth, while the center lawn will become a venue for outdoor events such as concerts and art festivals. 

MAD’s design prioritizes the emotional and spiritual needs of citizens, brings in natural landscapes, and integrates urban spaces and building volumes into nature. Through careful traffic planning and employing a vertical use of space, MAD’s scheme meets the station’s existing passenger demand while leaving room for future sustainable development and expansion. The emphasis on connectivity with the surrounding environment will also help to increase its use among the local residents by enhancing the social attributes of the district and ultimately injecting new life into the old city center. MAD foresees the project as a model for urban revitalization for Chinese cities undergoing major infrastructural development.

Team:

Architects: MAD
Principal Partners in Charge: Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano
Associate Partners in Charge: Liu Huiying, Tiffany Dalhen           
Design Team: Yao Ran, Yu Lin, Cao Chen, Chen Nianhai, Cheng Xiangju, Reinier Simons, Fu Xiaoyi, Chen Wei, He Shunpeng, Li Zhengdong, Cao Xi, Zhang Kai, Li Xinyun, Kaushik Raghuraman, Deng Wei, Huang Zhiyu, Huai Wei, Sun Mingze, Dayie Wu, Hou Jinghui, Yin Jianfeng, Claudia Hertrich, Liu Zifan, Xie Qilin, Alan Rodríguez Carrillo, Qiang Siyang,
Client: Jiaxing Modern Service Industry Development & Investment (Group) Co., Ltd.
Executive Architects: Tongji Architectural Design (Group) Co., Ltd., China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group Co., Ltd.
Heritage Consultant: Shanghai Shuishi Architectural Design & Planning Corp.,Ltd
Landscape Consultant: Z’scape Landscape Planning and Design
Lighting Consultant: Beijing Sign Lighting Industry Group
Signage Consultant: NDC CHINA, Inc.
Interior Design Consultant: Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Decoration & Landscape Design Research Institute Co., Ltd.
Structural Consultant: LERA Consulting Structural Engineers
Façade Consultant: RFR Shanghai
Construction Contractor: China Railway Construction Engineering Group, China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group, China Construction Eighth Engineering Division Co., Ltd.

Photographer: CreatAR