Rail Station Area in Bozen
This competition presented an extremely fascinating theme. Expanding
the city centre, in reality doubling it, by urbanising the area of the commercial
rail lands, to be relocated outside the city. A unique opportunity to double the historic centre of Bolzano.
The project comprehends the necessity of defining the city’s future, the
new Bolzano, without losing or misrepresenting its original identity.
We decided to design a contemporary “pedestrian city”.
The area must become the heart of the future city. Form here it must be
possible to reach the historic centre on foot in a few minutes.
The new Bolzano, a pedestrian city at the human scale, can be walked during every season, using covered paths with winter gardens and areas of pause. The new rail lines and the new rail station are fundamental to the future structure of the area: in recent years the position of the station has been the object of a great deal of public attention and lengthy discussions.
The project calls for maintaining the current rail bed, narrowing it where it is excessive and optimising and reshaping the layout of the tracks.
The station is an enlargement and reorganisation of the existing structure.
It is characterised by a long, gently sloping pedestrian walk that passes beneath the rail lines, connecting the gently sloping ramps of the main square in the historic centre, Piazza Walter , with the new contemporary pedestrian city of Bolzano.
