High Speed Train Station in Huelva

Location: Huelva, Spain

Client: Ayuntamiento de Huelva
Date: 2009 Restricted Competition
Total Area: Undisclosed
Budget: €28,5 million

Team credits:

Partner in charge: Alejandro Zaera Polo

Team: Pep Wennberg, Ravi Lopes Calamita, Guillermo Fernandez Abascal, Manuel Eijo, Giuseppe Giordano, Elisabetta Cabras.

Engineers: GPO

The opportunity to design a new terminal station in Huelva as a new end for the South West Spanish railway system suggests the possibility to generate its architecture from the movement geometries and bifurcations that characterize railway lines.

The geometry of the project emerged from an intensification of the pattern of the platform canopies, defining a formal continuity between the hall of the station and the roof of the platforms. Through a deformation of the geometry of these canopies, the curves were stretched until the required space was covered.

The idea to produce a large roof as a model for the station is precisely aiming at removing the perimeter walls to allow for the passenger flow across the building and recover the idea of the simple station: a roof to shelter from the outdoor weather.

The resulting geometry is dynamic and fluid, capable to immediately communicate the arrival of a high-speed transport system. On the one side it relates with the movement of the trains and on the other with the fluvial, liquid, and marshy condition of the landscape surrounding the city of Huelva with the Odiel River to the west, the Tinto River to the South East and the Estero of the Metas to the South.