Hasta La Ideas

News: architecture firm Foster + Partners has unveiled proposals to increase the capacity of New York’s Grand Central Terminal by widening approach routes and pedestrianising streets (+ slideshow).

The architects were one of three teams invited by the Municipal Art Society of New York to re-think the public spaces in and around the 100-year-old station, which was designed to serve around 75,000 passengers a day but often sees as many as a million passing through.

Foster + Partners’ proposals include the pedestrianisation of Vanderbilt Avenue to the west of the station, creating a public square at the entrance to the new East Side Access lines, surrounded by trees, cafes and public art.

The plans also include wider pavements and trees on the southern approach from 42nd Street and along Lexington Avenue to the east, while larger underground spaces would lead into the terminal from Park Avenue to the north.

Inside the station, wider concourses would help to ease congestion for travellers on the 4, 5, 6 and 7 metro lines.

“The quality of a city’s public realm reflects the level of civic pride and has a direct impact on the quality of everyday life,” said Norman Foster. “With the advent of the Long Island Rail Road East Side Access, along with the plan to re-zone the district, there has never been a better opportunity to tackle the issues of public access and mobility around one of the greatest rail terminals in the world.”

Foster + Partners presented their proposals yesterday at the third annual MAS Summit for New York City, alongside American firms SOM and WXY Architecture.

In the last year the firm has also won a competition to design a high-speed rail station for Spain and presented proposals for an airport and transport hub on the estuary outside London.

See more stories about Foster + Partners »

Here’s some more information from Foster + Partners:

Foster + Partners re-imagines Grand Central Terminal for 2013 Centenary

Norman Foster presented proposals for a masterplan to bring clarity back to Grand Central Terminal at The Municipal Art Society of New York’s annual Summit in New York last night.

Masterplan – click above for larger image

Grand Central Terminal is one of New York’s greatest landmarks and contains perhaps the city’s finest civic space. However, over time it has become a victim of its own success. A building designed to be used by 75,000 people per day now routinely handles ten times that number with up to a million on peak days.

The result is acute overcrowding; connections to the rail and subway lines beneath the concourse are inadequate; and the arrival and departure experience is poor. Added to that, the surrounding streets are choked with traffic and pedestrians are marginalised. The rapid growth of tall buildings in the vicinity has all but consumed the Terminal.

Within the station, the proposal creates wider concourses, with new and improved entrances. Externally, streets will be reconfigured as shared vehicle/pedestrian routes, and Vanderbilt Avenue fully pedestrianised. The proposal also creates new civic spaces that will provide Grand Central with an appropriate urban setting for the next 100 years.

Wider masterplan

The 42nd street entrance to the south, where access is severely constrained, will be widened to fill the entire elevation by using existing openings, thus greatly easing accessibility. The access via tunnels on the northern approach from Park Avenue will be rebalanced in favour of pedestrians by creating grander, enlarged underground spaces through the Helmsley building. Lexington Avenue to the east will be tree-lined with wider sidewalks and will benefit from more prominent and enhanced tunnel access to Grand Central Terminal. The idea already mooted to pedestrianise Vanderbilt Avenue to the west would be extended. The street would be anchored to the south by a major new enlarged civic space between 43rd Street and the west entrance to the Terminal and to the north by a plaza accommodating new entrances to the East Side Access lines. Trees, sculpture and street cafes will bring life and new breathing space to Grand Central Terminal.

At platform and concourse levels where congestion is particularly acute for travellers on the 4, 5, 6 and 7 lines, we will radically enlarge the connecting public areas, to address the huge increase in passenger traffic in the last 100 years. This will transform the experience for arriving and departing commuters and passengers. A generous new concourse will be created beneath the west entrance plaza on Vanderbilt Avenue connecting directly into the main station concourse.

This visionary masterplan with its focus on pedestrians and travellers will allow Grand Central Terminal to regain the civic stature that it deserves as a major New York landmark and an appropriate twenty-first century transport hub.

The post Foster + Partners present vision
for Grand Central Terminal appeared first on Dezeen.

A faceted wrapping of aluminium looms over the platforms at this high-speed railway station in northern Spain by Abalos+Sentkiewicz Arquitectos (+ slideshow).

Each of the platforms are buried below the ground and sit within the structure of an existing station and tunnel.

Architect Juan Enríquez told Dezeen how the “irregular tetrahedral configuration” of the new faceted ceiling wraps and supports the original structure, but tiny perforations let passengers see the columns and joists contained behind the aluminium surfaces.

The station was completed as part of a wider project to deliver a transportation hub, public park and housing development on a single site in the riverside city of Logroño.

Five residential towers will surround the station, while the new public park slopes up over the roof.

Circular openings in this roof open up to glazed rooftop pavilions, which reflect natural light onto the platforms using a system of mirrors.

See more stories about stations, including the vaulted concourse at King’s Cross in London and a metro station with a spotty roof.

Photography is by José Hevia.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

High Speed Train Station in Logroño

The railway station has been designed in accordance with the urban role assigned in the proposal for the international competition and the urban planning and landscape further developed. The station serves as a starting point of a new urban project, which re-establishes the connectivity between the North and South of the city and leads to a large public park where the roof is an integrated part giving its geometry and topography to the volume.

All stations in surface that we know mean an abrupt interruption of urban continuity. Precisely, the urban element that is destined to unite and bring together the city with the territory, leaves a void in the city involving urban and social segregation. The opportunity to rethink the typology of the station that means the burial of the tracks should be a shift in the form of conceiving them. Intermodal Stations are an opportunity to transform the city, creating public spaces, developing green belts, promoting pedestrian and bicycle mobility: an opportunity to create a new topography to intensify the experience of the city as a collective process.

What makes the project LIF 2002 unique is having faced from its beginnings with an intensity divided between infrastructure and urbanism, landscape and architecture, ecology and economy; with a whole model of management that seeks quality and innovation in all moments of process and attends both quantitative and qualitative aspects. In this sense it may be said that it is a pioneering experience both on landform buildings as well as ecological urbanism.

International Restricted Competition by invitation: First Prize (2006)
Client: LIF 2002,SA (Ayuntamiento de Logroño, Comunidad autónoma de La Rioja, ADIF)
LIF 2002, SA management: Mª Cruz Gutiérrez

Location: Logroño, La Rioja, España
Program: “Plan Especial de Reforma Interior desarrollado, aprobado” (2006-2009): Train Station, Bus Station, Parking, Housing, Park and Urbanization.
Area PERI: 213Ha. Train Station Area: 8.000m2. Sup. Platform area: 19.000m2. Parking Area: 18.000m2. Bus Station Area: 10.800m2. Urbanization: 145.000m2. Housing Area (Towers): 41.250m2. Housing Area (Other Housing): 83.750m2.
First Phase Budget (Underground burying + Train Station): 108.000.000€
Bus Station Budget: 20.000.000€
Status: High Speed Train Station finished, Park and Urbanization in progress

Project Direction: Abalos + Sentkiewicz arquitectos (Iñaki Ábalos, Alfonso Miguel, Renata Sentkiewicz)
Project Team: Yeray Brito, Aaron Forest, Pablo de la Hoz, Ismael Martín, Laura Torres, Fernando Rodríguez, Haizea Aguirre, Elena Rodríguez, Verónica Meléndez.
Landscape Design: Ábalos + Sentkiewicz (Iñaki Ábalos, Renata Sentkiewicz)
Urban Collaborators: ARUP (competition), Ezquiaga Arquitectura Sociedad y Territorio SL (PERI)

The post High Speed Train Station in Logroño
by Abalos+Sentkiewicz Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

London designer Andy Martin has built a wooden road bicycle for Thonet using the steam-bending processes the German furniture company first employed in 1859 for its classic cafe chair.

Though much of the beech frame of the Thonet Concept Bike was bent by hand, the final jointing and contours were CNC-cut. A series of connectors and sprung rods reinforces joints and stress areas in the frame.

“The challenge was to take on the fairly low-tech process of steam bending and then apply it to a 21st century bicycle with highly complex engineering,” says Martin.

The fixed-wheel bike has a solid beech seat, carbon-fibre wheels and no brakes, and is available for £43,000.

The classic Thonet chair (pictured below) was first produced in the 19th century by German furniture maker Michael Thonet and can still be seen in cafes more than 150 years later.

We previously featured a colourful update of Thonet’s classic chair by Robert Stadler.

Recently on Dezeen we’ve featured a folding bicycle with full-size wheels and a bicycle that grows with your child.

See all our stories about bicycles »

Here’s some more information from the designer:

At the end of 2010, London-based designer Andy Martin was asked by Thonet to design and develop a concept road bicycle using their steam bending process developed in the 1930s. Andy Martin Studio developed three designs, the last of which was selected because of its beauty and modest connection with the heritage of the company.

“The challenge was to take on fairly low-tech process of steam bending and then apply it to a 21st century bicycle with highly complex engineering,” says Martin. With the many restrictions of hand bending the beech frame, the final jointing and contours would be cut and adjusted on a CNC machine.

Andy Martin has also developed a series of connectors and sprung rods to reinforce joints and the major stress areas in the frame.

The bike itself is a fixed wheel, which is the tradition of cycling one has a greater connection to the bike and the surface one rides on. The bike comes with no brakes and has several interchangeable gear ratios. The seat is solid beech wood supported on a sprung rod supports. The wheels, not designed by Martin, are carbon fibre HED H3s.

The bike will be available in limited edition and cost £43,000.

The post Thonet Concept Bike
by Andy Martin Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

The aeroplanes of the future will be catapulted into the sky, fly in formation like birds along “express skyways” and glide into airports with their engines turned off, according to aviation company Airbus.

The Smarter Skies project, unveiled this week, sets out a vision for more sustainable air travel by the year 2050. Airbus claims that by flying in a V-formation like birds, aircraft could reduce drag to cut emissions by up to 25 per cent and reduce journey times by an average 13 minutes. Formation flying would also allow air traffic control rooms to treat each flock of planes as a single entity, effectively simplifying their workload.

The project also predicts that by 2050, aircraft will be able to intelligently select the most efficient flight path according to conditions and the paths of other planes. Beyond 2050, it says, a system for assisted take-off could sling the plane into the air using motors built into the track, which would minimise noise and allow for shorter runways.

Airbus predicts that if the air traffic management systems on board aircraft were successfully optimised, the aviation sector would save 9 million tonnes of fuel a year and 28 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

The project illustrations show a conceptual aeroplane by Airbus that we reported on last year, with longer, slimmer wings and onboard entertainment including a virtual golf course.

Read more about the predictions on the Airbus website.

See all our stories about airports »
See all our stories about transport »

The post Smarter Skies
by Airbus appeared first on Dezeen.

Paralympic athletes headed for London 2012 have inspired transport design studio Priestmangoode to create a conceptual airline seat with a detachable wheelchair.

The Air Access system would mean passengers with reduced mobility could be helped into the wheelchair in the departure lounge – where there’s more room to manoeuvre than on the aircraft itself – and remain seated until they reached their destination.

Once on board, the wheelchair would simply clip back into a fixed seat frame to form a normal aisle seat, which could also be used by passengers without disabilities on flights where the wheelchairs weren’t needed.

Watch Paul Priestman talk about design for aircraft interiors in our movie interview here or below.

Here’s some more information from Priestmangoode:

As Paralympic athletes arrive in London this week, few of us ask ourselves how they travelled here. Britain’s leading transport designers, Priestmangoode, have been thinking about the issue, and are unveiling a design that will transform air travel for passengers with reduced mobility (PRMs).

Air Access is a concept that facilitates air travel for PRMs by enabling an easier transition from gate to aircraft. The ingenious design aims to reduce the indignity and discrimination that PRMs face when travelling by air.

Paul Priestman, founding director of Priestmangoode, explains: “We have been designing aircraft interiors for over fifteen years and always work to improve the entire passenger journey, from home to destination. At present there are some accessibility regulations on aircraft, however they cater for only the most basic requirements. As a result, passengers with special needs often face considerable difficulties when travelling by air. “

“These difficulties generally go unnoticed – very few members of the public are aware of the anxiety and discomfort PRMs can experience when travelling. But it is a matter of equality that people with reduced mobility should have the same rights to a quality passenger experience that able-bodied people have.”

Priestman continues “As designers we strive to improve things, not just for the immediate future, but for the long-term. A demographic shift is sweeping across Europe: the population is ageing, life expectancy is increasing, obesity levels are rising and PRMs account for a larger proportion of the population than ever before. Air Access is a much-needed concept for the future of airline travel that will provide a pleasant experience for passengers with disabilities orreduced mobility.”

Jennifer Howitt Browning, assistant coach of the women’s Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball team and former Paralympian comments: “Air Access is a fantastic idea and an ideal initiative for prompting the dialogue on how to make air travel accessible for passengers with disabilities. I have heard of too many cases in which airline passengers have been made to feel like second-rate citizens, which is both distressing and demotivating. I know this only too well. I travel by air frequently and at times it has been an ordeal. I applaud any initiative that tries to tackle this problem, and hope that Air Access will stimulate constructive discussions between airlines, airports, seat vendors and disability bodies.”

Why do we need Air Access?

» Currently, around 20% of the UK’s adult population has some form of disability or mobile difficulty. For this demographic air travel can be fraught with problems.

» Ground and airline staff are often inadequately trained and unaware of their legal obligations.

» The absence of a systematic process for boarding and disembarking PRMs can lead to confusion and complications for airline staff.

» For PRMs, being physically assisted into and out of airplane seats can be stressful and demeaning, and inflight toileting can be difficult.

» It’s imperative that we start thinking today about implementing change to cater for future generations of air travellers.

How it works

The Air Access concept consists of two elements: a detachable wheelchair by which passengers can be transported onto and off of the plane, and a fixed-frame aisle seat on the aircraft into which the wheelchair is mated to create a regular airline seat. Ground services staff assist the passenger into the Air Access wheelchair seat in the departure gate or on the jetway, where there is ample space to manoeuvre. When seated, the passenger is wheeled onto the plane.

Once onboard, the wheelchair’s 360-degree pivoting wheels enable it to be slid sideways into the fixed-frame aisle seat without the passenger needing to get up. When the two elements are positioned, they are locked together for the duration of the flight. On arrival, ground staff simply unlock the wheelchair seat, slide it out into the aisle and wheel the passenger to the jetway or arrival gate. Once there, the passenger returns to his or her own wheelchair or zimmer frame, or transfers into the airport’s wheelchair.

Benefits of Access Air

» The Air Access seat could be installed in every aisle seat of the aircraft. In a wide-body this would be four seats per row, meaning dozens of PRMs could travel on any given flight. This is particularly useful when large groups of passengers with reduced mobility travel together eg. Paralympic athletes

» Increased safety for passengers. Passengers do not need to be handled by airline staff in the tight confines of the aircraft

» Easier to use toilet facilities in flight. Passengers only need assistance to unlock their seat and wheel to the nearest toilet.

» The chair has a removable seat pad. Many passengers with serious disabilities, for instance spinal injuries, need to sit on their own purpose-designed cushions. Passengers can customise the Air Access seat to suit their individual needs.

» Anyone can sit in the seat. As the access seat integrates seamlessly into the aircraft, the airline does not lose seating space if there are no PRMs travelling.

» The Air Access concept is suitable for all aircraft types, though offers particular benefits to long haul, wide body aircraft—both for passenger experience and cost benefit to airlines.

The post Air Access by
Priestmangoode appeared first on Dezeen.