Design Strategies for the Railway Transport Hub: How to Make a Transport Facility Catalytic

Description

In the era population migrates rapidly, railway transportation plays a more and more important role in people’s daily life. In most cases in China, the railway station is only a transport node for passengers to hurry through, not a place to invite citizens to stay and have various activities. The study investigates design strategies based on urban catalyst theory which can contribute to the vitality of the transport hub and promote a catalytic effect. It summarised three catalytic design strategies: integration between the transport hub and the urban environment, rational and flexible spatial configuration, dynamic public space design. The study chooses Kyoto Station and Hongkong West Kowloon Station as analytical cases to evaluate their catalytic effect. It finds the catalytic design strategies can generate intensive pedestrian traffic and therefore promote the vitality of the place. Furthermore, the study takes redesign project of Shanghai West Railway Station as an application of catalytic design strategies, and it poses the concept of cultural catalytic transport hub and suggested a new type of spatial catalyst, volume catalyst.

Period	Jul 2020