Comment of the Holcim Awards 2005 Jury for Europe
The project presents an innovative scheme for recovering forfeited urban territory and at the same time creating a new spatial presence in the city.
The work is significant because it contributes in an integrative manner to the disciplines of architecture, urban and landscape design, civil, urban and environmental engineering, and other related fields pertaining to construction.
Equally important is the ethically oriented stance toward socially viable environments and cultural values. Of particular interest are the proposed "light eyes" that serve simultaneously as a tectonic attractor and a creative means for distributing light to the station below.
The project successfully demonstrates an efficient use of natural energy resources that are coordinated in such a way as to improve the experiential quality of the site and to increase material performance of the infrastructure.
Serving to promote public transportation, the project is economically viable in that it implements a model for recycling existing structures while offering a functionally flexible platform that can accommodate future programmatic changes.
The work responds in an aesthetically convincing way to establishing a dialogue between natural and man-made environments and manifests a sensitive approach to contextual restoration.