Global Holcim Awards Gold 2006

Main Station Stuttgart, Germany

Global jury report
The project is highly commended for its innovative approach to integrating material, structural, and product research in a straightforward, sustainable response to reclaiming lost territory of the city.

An efficient and refined deployment of technology is combined with intelligent resource management that offers valuable knowledge transfer across the disciplines of architecture, planning, landscape design, as well as civil, urban, and environmental engineering.

Priority is placed on inspiring a new sense of collective values regarding the potential of place without indulging in extravagant or nostalgic gestures.

With spatial continuity of the urban fabric given utmost significance, the initiative promises long-term beneficial impact on the social, economic, and cultural livelihood of the community by giving viable expression to the potential of returns on shared assets.

Due to its attractiveness, the new station will link two parts of the urban fabric that have previously been divided, amplifying the conditions for social coherence while providing novel possibilities for leisure and communication across generations.

Furthermore, such a broad ranging improvement to an otherwise neglected part of the city will encourage more concerted use of public transport due to the emblematic presence of the facility.

Moreover, the resulting reduction in energy consumption will certainly yield long-term environmental benefits and hopefully spawn more widespread awareness of the need for joint action in resource conservation.

Serving to catalyze a dialogue on the future of municipal sustainability between diverse stakeholders, the project expresses as much consideration for the productive flow of competences as it does for the cost-effective flow of energy and material.

The virtuosity of tectonic articulation achieved at such a large-scale infrastructural undertaking not only conveys an ambience of aesthetic intelligence, but also delivers a culturally refined celebration of collective space.