Liège-Guillemins TGV Railway Station

Santiago Calatrava’s out-of-this-world high-speed-train station puts an ancient city back on the map.

By Josephine Minutillo

Liège has a long and storied history. For centuries, the bustling town, thought to be the birthplace of Charlemagne, was a cultural, religious, and commercial crossroads. Located in present-day Belgium’s French-speaking Walloon region, Liège’s recent past is less illustrious, since the metal and coal-mining industries that sustained it in modern times have slowly disappeared.

The city was ripe for a makeover. By the early 1990s, discussions were under way to build a high-speed-railway station to spark renewed interest in the medieval metropolis and capitalize on its strategic position between major cities in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. From a short list of likely as well as surprising architects — from Nicholas Grimshaw to Aldo Rossi — Santiago Calatrava was selected in 1997 to design the new landmark.

Program

The new station would replace an unremarkable 1950s building that occupied a much smaller lot on the same site and accommodate new tracks for high-speed train travel, which railway authorities throughout Europe have in recent years endeavored to make as seamless as possible between countries. The transition to the new station would also have to be seamless, as the old one continued to operate while construction proceeded.

Calatrava was up for the challenge, having already completed a number of bridges and transportation facilities, including railway stations in Zurich and Lyon. “Building in the horizontal is much more difficult than building vertically,” says the Spanish architect and engineer. ”People think a station is just a roof, but it is much more complicated than that.”

Solution

Nevertheless, the roof of the Liège-Guillemins station is as spectacular as they come. Rising 115 feet above the five platforms and nine tracks, the steel-and-glass assembly ushers in a new era of rail travel, achieving an openness and transparency about which designers of Victorian-era stations could only dream.

The vaulted structure was built in sections, each literally pushed forward as it was completed using a construction technique developed to reduce disturbance to the active train traffic below.

In total, the 39 “ribs” span 518 feet to cover the full length of an arriving train. Narrow canopies extend south like fingers past the main roof to shelter extra passengers during peak travel times, when the number of cars on a train almost doubles.

Calatrava’s facadeless structure offers clear views of the city spread out before the platforms, which are raised about 15 feet above the ground. Ten circular shops animate the concourse level at grade. The slab between the two levels is supported by concrete arches — cast on-site — separated by glass block.

For all its exuberance, Calatrava’s design is highly rational and legible, an absolute necessity for orienting arriving passengers. Auxiliary spaces include offices, parking, and bike and luggage storage. A small bridge traverses the motorway behind the station; that area’s higher elevation is accessed from a mezzanine level above the platforms.

Commentary

All of Calatrava’s work celebrates movement, but none more fittingly than the Liège-Guillemins station. The soaring ribs of its massive roof and the repetitive arches of its auxiliary spaces’ long, arcaded sections are as dizzying as the state-of-the-art trains that dart across its tracks. Nothing about the lofty structure, which appears to change shape at every angle, is static. To visitors arriving by train, the gleaming white edifice is a glowing beacon against a gray backdrop. Seen from the hilly parkland behind the station, its roof resembles the shell of a turtle — that slowest of slow creatures — transformed into an aerodynamic armature to keep pace with the locomotive traffic that roars past it.

While the structure’s scale and color may overwhelm the low, dark brick buildings immediately surrounding it — as if a space-age circus troupe pitched its tent in a picturesque old town — that disparity may be abated if Calatrava’s master plan for a new boulevard extending east beyond the station to the Meuse River materializes. Unfortunately, for now the large, empty plaza that sits out front serves as a makeshift parking lot.

As security concerns make air travel increasingly tedious and cause more flight delays, investment in rail travel would seem a safe bet. Countries within the European Union have committed heavily to creating a high-speed-rail network that swiftly transports passengers between city centers. Americans can take a page from their book as our own government doles out stimulus funds. While ambitious ground-transportation projects like San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Terminal seem to be moving forward, the exact fate of others, including New York’s proposed Moynihan Station (to replace the deplored Penn Station) and Calatrava’s own World Trade Center Transportation Hub in downtown Manhattan, remain up in the air.

Owners- contracting authorities: SNCB-Holding – Infrabel
Project management: Euro Liège TGV

Gross square footage:
527,000 sq. ft. (including tracks)

Completion date: September 2009

Architect:
Santiago Calatrava LLC
713 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212.452.1046

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