BIG create dynamic transport hub under iconic floating roof

TenderStream member Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has unveiled the final designs for Västerås Travel Centre, a new transportation hub for trains, buses, taxis, bikes, and pedestrians in the heart of one of Sweden’s largest cities. The city authorities instigated the project as part of an urban redevelopment plan called 3B – Build Away the Barriers. This plan involves the construction of a hub on the city’s existing railway station site, with accompanying upgrades to the surrounding area.

The design challenge was to provide new facilities while improving on the function of the existing station, which currently bisects the surrounding neighbourhoods rather than serving to link them together.  In response, BIG designed a hub that acts as a dynamic centre for urban transport, which also providing a new visual landmark for the city. 

The final design unifies the city’s urban flows under one distinctive floating roof, which appears as a continuous thin sheet, gently lifted at its four corners. The roof collects multiple layers of the travel centre’s public programmes and urban spaces within a cohesive identity. As a continuous extension of the city’s existing structure, the roof adapts to the programmatic needs of the city below, while also producing a rolling landscape above. From the hub, visitors and travellers can enjoy views of Lake Mälaren and the city centre. 

The design team state: “Rather than simply becoming infrastructure for public transportation, the new Västerås Travel Centre is shaped by the flow of people and public life, transforming infrastructural necessity into opportunities for social interaction.”

Construction on the centre is expected to begin in 2022, with the building completed in 2025.

Lucy Nordberg
TenderStream Head of Research

This tender was first published by TenderStream on 22.06.2020 here

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