lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
BAU530-1 Nanjing Gaochun Transport Interchange – Stage One

Gaochun District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China

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Discipline

Architecture

Typology

Transport Interchange

City

Gaochun District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China

Date

2015

Status

Completed 2018

Client

Nanjing Kechun Industrial Development Co., Ltd

Program

Elevated metro station, long-distance bus station, city bus station

lyrical islands in pragmatic seas

Gaochun town is soon to be connected to Nanjing megacity by both light rail and freeway. A reduced 50-minute travel time will catalyse business development and population growth. The new rail station is located in the town’s planned new commercial centre, within its northern growth district. It is to be combined with a new intercity bus station and local bus interchange. A tourist exhibition centre is included at the interchange in anticipation of growing visitor numbers to this attractive lakes district and Citta Slow region.

a knot of space-time

This building sits on, over, and under one of the many intersections of four urban movement systems in Goachun: the train, the bus, private vehicles, and pedestrian networks. It does not just sit adjacent to these systems – it is not a siding. And it does not just sit at the end of line or route – it is not a terminus. It is both a tying together and a keeping apart of the four different systems – it is an elaborate space-time knot that keeps objects and events apart – thus avoiding collisions between trains, buses, cars and pedestrians.

separating flows

The below ground car-parking space provides pedestrians access to and from their arriving or departing cars.
The ground floor is an intense co-existence of pedestrian movements to and from arriving and departing buses, private cars, and taxis. Also present at this level are pedestrians moving to and from the train platforms at the second floor – in fact everything but the trains themselves are present at this highly contested level.
The second floor is for pedestrians to gain access to the train platforms and the arriving and departing trains.

two seas

Rather than resist the complex pragmatics of the movement demands at ground floor level, BAU embraced them, perceiving the site as two seas of pragmatics: a sea of bitumen (for buses and cars); and a sea of paving (for pedestrians).

Both seas are continuous and both seas have islands of buildings, parking, and vegetation. These two clearly articulated on ground circulation systems are not only legible and safe; they are also visually very powerful when viewed from the adjacent buildings on and off the site.

infrastructure and kinetics

The architecture explores the iconography and poetics of infrastructure and movement. The bus station is a habitable and stable (but not static) piece of infrastructure – a bridge that spans the sea of bitumen.

In contrast, the train station is large-scale op-art piece. This building straddles the rail line becoming an island in-between the sea of paving and the sea of bitumen. The various pragmatic elements of the program are spread along the rail line. This assemblage of smaller elements is wrapped with a single large-scale gesture, a series of dynamic blades of varying lengths, which at speed will create a kinetic veil. These blades are cut to provide entries and exits and will also protect the interior of the building from the heat gain of low altitude east and west sun.

Private Landscapes

2015

Nanjing

Playgrounds

2020

Suzhou

Public Landscapes

2000-2005

Shanghai

Structures & Pavillions

2019

2023

Office

2005-2010

2021

Shenzhen

Culture

Public

Planning

Hangzhou

Urban Design

Huai’an

Xi'an

Xinyu

Education

2013

Retail

Hospitality

Mixed Use

Sports

Education

2018

Jiangyin

Yixing

2017

Taizhou

Office

Culture

Retail

Melbourne

2016

2011

Residential

Infrastructure

Kyneton

Hotel

Hotel

Wuxi

Healthcare

2014

2012

Healthcare

Fuding

Shaoxing

Chongqing

Kunshan

Wuhan

Cixi

Ningbo

Meishan

Canberra

Jingzhou

Chengdu

Hospitality

1990-2000

Xiamen

Residential

Hopetoun

Caofeidian

an excessive minimalism:
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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landscape, urbanity, networks, the suitcase, and the paper-bag:
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more than a frozen moment:
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look! up in the sky!
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Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
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a hybrid infrastructure:
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large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
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on reflection:
BAU674 Qingpu Performing Arts Centre

Place, typologies, programs, and public life:
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more than just a technopolis:
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a second network embracing history, smalllness, and complexity:
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a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
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disorder – not randonmness but beyond order:
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mosaics of teaching, networks of learning:
BAU149 Huai’an Tertiary Education District

walled cities within a walled city:
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co-existence without incompatibility:
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space-time conflict:
BAU544 Shanghai University Campus

clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
BAU119 Jinqiao Sports & Leisure Centre

Journeys AND destination, not just destinations:
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continuous loops and internal courts:
BAU603 Suzhou kindergarten no. 3

weaving and stitching:
BAU616 Jiangyin Greenway Loop (stage 1. Eastern Segment)

a constructed and cultured topography:
BAU269 Jindi Green Land Club

it takes a village to educate a child:
BAU602 Suzhou Sci-tech City Xizhu Kindergarten

city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
BAU600 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 30-class Primary School

artificial plateau:building more site:
BAU599 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 24-Class Junior High school

it is the least we could do: minimalism in an environment of expressionism
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
BAU618 Tianyou Experimental Primary School and Kindergarten, Suzhou

classrooms AND the in-between: teaching and learning beyond the classroom
BAU610 Taizhou School

other institutions for this new century:
BAU604 Qingpu District People’s Court

building the unfinished:
BAU003M The Victorian Pride Centre

minimal AND maximal:
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small in scale large in monumentality:
BAU027 Wyndham Mausoleum

multiple rooms of difference:
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active cultural edges, passive natural centres:
BAU402 Shanghai Qingpu Qin Yuan Lake Park

intimate, cool, sheltered and lively:
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formal teaching and informal learning:
BAU540 Gaochun New District Kindergaten to Year Nine School

an exercise in robustness:
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effortless complexity: learning from water-town:
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no longer but not only:
BAU213-3 Jindi Yunhu Market

actualizing the virtual:
BAU 213-2 Jindi Yunhu Sports and Activity Center

geometry, history, art, craft, iconography, and pragmatics: an exploration of intention, coding, narrative, and meaning
BAU021 Olinda Green + Public WC

there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in:
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BAU009 house in the sky

surreal adjacencies:
BAU019 Marymount Residence, Guest Accommodation, Stable + Office

mini-city of culture:
BAU590 Nanjing Pukou Haiqiao Community Service Center

keeping a low profile:
BAU 214 Suzhou Qingshan Hotel Phase I

positive space, human scale, and a blue-green net:
BAU213-1 Jindi Yunhu Housing

dis-integrated guest houses :
BAU495 Pine Pillow Retreat

don’t look at me, don’t look at me:
BAU436 Nanjing Jiangning Demonstration Kindergarten

new buildings, old topography:
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defining the perimeter, programming the centre, inhabiting them both:
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turning outside-in:
BAU199-2 Wuxi Fudi Forte Parktown Sales Pavilion

beyond PODS, networks, and nodes:
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podium and bill(ding)board:
BAU547 Nanjing Yaxi Town Central Hospital

inner sanctuary, outer crust:
BAU546 Nanjing Gaochun Qiqiao Hospital

an excessive minimalism:
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a plane of reference:
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rips in the fabric by place:
BAU461 Nanjing Tangshan Tourist Resort South District

other ideas of hospital:
BAU446 Fuding Hospital

architecture AND terrain:
BAU445 Suzhou Hi-tech District Cultural Center

crust: in-between and on the edge
BAU426 Shaoxing Jianhu Keyan Tourist Resort Planning

eco urbanism:
BAU425 Chongqing Eco Valley City

microcosm:
BAU348 Kunshan Hyper Complex

beyond the picturesque:
BAU347 Kunshan White Pagoda Park

don’t just re-use the typology, improve it!
BAU310 Hangzhou Changbanxiang Housing

building a community not just housing:
BAU302 Shanghai Ludi Baoshan

upside down program – ‘private’ circulation becoming ‘public’ circulation:
BAU254 Shanghai Wai Gao Qiao Culture Centre

extra-large private space as public space:
BAU199 Parktown, Housing, Fudi Forte, Wuxi

mini-me:
BAU197 Jindi Sanlin Pavilion

staggering:
BAU191 Wuhan Cuiwei Housing

urban camouflage:
BAU227 Hangzhou Sports Centre

the resort at the end of the yellow dirt road:
BAU543 Emerald Village at Soul Bay

critical regionalism and abstraction:
BAU487 Nanjing Yaxi Citta-Slow

hospital for the ill, health care for the healthy, aged care for the elderly: BAU469 Zhaoxiang Hospital

tear open the package: BAU247 Qingpu NGS Supermarket

urban sponge:
BAU324 Cixi Commercial and Culture Center

lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
BAU530-1 Nanjing Gaochun Transport Interchange – Stage One

fractured enormity:
BAU281 Chongqing Huarun

ring roads AND peripheral parks:
BAU243 Shanghai Ring Park

simple box OR 3 points in space – you choose:
BAU204-2 Ningbo Wanda Office

many utopias:
BAU129 Xinhu Pearl City Housing Development

a close family:
BAU125 Zhejiang Power Company HQ

stretching, squeezing, bending, trimming:
BAU550 Huanglong Xigu Urban Design

BOTH networks AND objects:
BAU497 Wyndham Cove Eco Sub-urb

ethics, democracy, difference:
BAU470 Towards a Socially Sustainable Canberra

warp and woof:
BAU460 Jingzhou Museum

sustainable technologies for clean living:
BAU396 Nanjing Residential

network of learning:
BAU341 Yushanwan School

not in galleries, but a way of seeing:
BAU338 Jingqiao Ramp Restaurant

shopping sandwich:
BAU321 Jiangyin Wuxing Commercial Centre

celebrating the collective, the intimate, the sustainable, and the local:
BAU312 Suzhou School

21st century Ponte Vecchio:
BAU287 Shanghai 2010 World Expo Bridge

antidote: not another ghetto city:
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at last …finally …some diversity:
BAU282 Jindi Sanlin Office

recycling and beyond
BAU264 Shanghai Jiashan Market

an assemblage of difference:
BAU256 Shanghai Hongqiao Performing Arts Center

streets as shelters, bars as amphitheaters, landscapes as playgrounds:
BAU235 Jinqiao Community Bars

reduce, reuse, recycle:
BAU220 Shanghai Sculpture Space

binary oppositions defining a field of operation – all we wanted was a park:
BAU122 Xiamen International Exhibition Centre

the hotel as microcosm of the city:
BAU018 Marque Hotel

…very strange:
BAU016 Penny Lane

the beautiful and the extraordinary:
BAU013 Hopetoun Bush Resort

a dynamic yet stable vehicle:
BAU510 Suzhou Tram Co. Headquarters

palimpsest:
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innovation both inside and out:
BAU433 Zhangjing Nobel Lake Park & Network

exquisite corpse
BAU416 Genetic City Caofeidian

landscape becomes urban design becomes architecture:
BAU390 Duolan Dong Dong Mixed Use Complex

BAU386 Symbiotic City

repetition and difference:
BAU384 Kunshan Pavilions

no longer drowning – waving:
BAU339-2&3 Suzhou Creek Promenade

yet another point of view:
BAU339-1 Suzhou Creek Serpentine Park

ordinary not heroic, symbolic not monumental:
BAU318 Hangzhou Xiaoshan Government Headquarters

woven threads:
BAU234 Jiangyin Arbour Park

private precincts, public networks:
BAU226 Pudong Yangjing

creative networks:
BAU224 Chengdu Fenghuangshan

maximize commuication and cross fertilization:
BAU208 Linping New City Centre

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