International train station Susa

TU Kaiserslautern

Project idea

The construction of a new high-speed rail track from Lyon-France to Turin-Italy, provides for the construction of a train station on either end of the 50km base tunnel through the alps.

For Italy, this projects provides a chance in the increase of winter tourism in the Susa valley, which has historically been cut off from the outside world due to its location deep in the alps and following the success of France's growth of industry in similar circumstances.

The goal in my projects lies in the creation of a multimodal transport hub for the Susa region, giving tourists the chance to access its natural beauty through multiple modes of transportation.
This comes with the goal to integrate the construction into the landscape and provide a visual connection between the passenger and the key features of the scenic location of the Susa valley in the Piemont region of Italy.

The location of the project just outside of the city of Susa is the connecting point between the historical and the new high speed railway tracks, the A32 highway, as well as multiple communal roads.

Giving all this infrastructure access to the new multimodal infrastructure hub and connecting it to the traffic network of the region is one of my key objectives.

Project description

For the international train station Susa, an Ensemble of three buildings was conceived to allow the flow of cars between the buildings and provide a traffic flow from one side of the rail tracks to the other.

Each building is providing different access to modes of transportation, making the project a multimodal hub for the Susa valley and increasing the incoming flow of tourism.

As an overarching solution and a building block for the project, the structural grid serves as a reaction of the design to the intersection of the two rail tracks in different angles and was one of the bigger challenges I had to find answers to.
The grid provides for a parallel, symmetrical and non hindering alignment of the structural columns on the platforms downstairs, while giving the above ground building parallel points of exits to the platform of the historical train track along the face of the train hall.

The figure of the buildings follows the shape of the valley in a horizontal orientation and with a descending hierarchy in width and height, based on the idea of the poetic moment of arrival that I assigned to each mode of transportation based on personal experience.
Rail traffic being the most prominent, bus traffic falling just short and car traffic coming in last.

The orientation of the building further gives way to a prominent visual connection in each of the buildings, by providing empty foot traffic ways between east and west.

Technical information

The structural grid of 13,5m x 9m is a overarching rule in the design. 
The Depth of the buildings is based on two units of said structural grid with a universal depth of the buildings of 27m, whereas the individual buildings each react in a different structural manner to said depth, based on the needs and spatial experience each building wants to provide.

The interior as well as the facade are each dependent on a fraction of said grid, with the interior spaces containing all the elements in a 1,125m grid and the exterior facade being made up of elements in a 1,5m grid, therefore clearly differentiating between the inside and the outside.