pic. 00 Main Picture

INTRODUCTION Regarding its geographical position, Warsaw is one of the main communication nodes in central Europe, connecting East with the West. Dense network of international, national and local railroads merges into an aorta pulsing living cells of almost 500.000 passengers per day, through city of 2.000.000 people population, cutting its tissue all the way to the centre. Central part of the trace is interwoven into the post-war undergrounds manifested from time to time on the surface by socialist-realism entrance pavilion, modernistic grand central or just unexpected decline in the city skyline above the railroad.

RAILWAY AND THE CITY Length ways its whole route through Warsaw, railroad is mainly hidden underground. It is a typical modernistic solution integrating train transportation into the structure of the city. Thus, there are also some singularities within this system, places when railway proudly becomes visible, either at the ground level, bridge or in artificial land saddle that cuts city apart. Still, hidden or visible, railroad influence on the city is crucial – it stands for catalytic potential coming from transportation people and good, generating motion, action and interaction which finally leads to social animation and city growth.

Introduced design site is one of those places, where railroad is still visible, before diving into underground tunnels. Situated in the centre of Warsaw (Poland), it is a 500 meters long section of a saddle-shaped land depression along one of the main streets in the city – Aleje Jerozolimskie. Railroad station associated with this site, called Ochota, is the last stop, before train hides underground and reaches the very same centre of the city. It is also the one of the last that keeps industrial revolution convention, of showing train entering the city as a manifesto of industrial progress, visible. Today, there is not much more left from this mental picture, station is perceived only as a point where one is changing its means of transport and the place where it is situated as an unfortunate, uninhabitable and problematic piece of land in the middle of the growing city.

IDEA MATERIALISATION Considering gathered information, short design manifesto was created as fallowed: Design strategy needs to take advantage of catalytic properties given by the place (involving motion into design) and underline the ultimately value of communication (either physical or informational) as a universal trailblazer of the progress. Design strategy needs to go all the way back to the roots of the history connected with railroad industry and genome of train station itself. We refuse to treed it only as a communication mean, at the same time attempting to use this characteristics as a starting point for introducing the higher value. It should be developed based on integrating various functional means into mesh-work of transportation system.

Series of section typologies were studied in order to fulfill manifesto’s demands. Morphologies, from initial railway station canopy structures to spatial interpretation of its archetype, were analysed in terms of structural efficiency and spatial qualities.(pic. 02) Final volume was created in such a way, it is an integral part of train platform, allowing motion distribution from the platform, above into the building, as well as onto city level, all that without visual division between the city and the train platform. Diversified saturation of the spacial frame (main building structure) allowed flexible function placement in a predefined global space frame. Potential volumes are generated in and increasing order from bottom to the top of the structure, leaving ground part open to spontaneous manifestation of social activities (such as open air theatre or market ) and slowly closing upper part for pre-determined and accessed on monthly basis functions.

HYBRID PROGRAMMING In order to deal with spacial demands established in the manifesto, flexible 3 dimensional space frame, capable of both, caring loads and determining global volume, was proposed. Required functional representations were stack onto each other in increasing order, creating bottom-up brunching section schema, typical in nature (growing tree like structure) but alien in engineering (man made structures are usually wide at the bottom and narrow at the top) Boxed-shaped space avatars main function was to carry information about volume and location of the particular space in relation to the neighbours. This spacial diagram was parametrically translated into 3 dimensional Voronoi cell system, creating stiff and strong cellular boundaries for program location as well as input data for elevation structure design (pic. 04).

Shortest distance Voronoi algorithm characteristics allow spacial integration of neighbour function at the level of structure generation (functions merge into each other). This phenomena underline hybrid character of the building not only at the global level of functional mixture but also at the level of functional transition and integration, bot in horizontal and vertical section (transformation form free plan to free section)

HYBRID   MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING IN WARSAW pic. 01 Sidewalk And Platform View

HYBRID   MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING IN WARSAW pic. 02 Evolution Schemes

HYBRID   MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING IN WARSAW pic. 03 Plans And Sections

HYBRID   MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING IN WARSAW pic. 04 Structure Generation

HYBRID   MULTIFUNCTIONAL BUILDING IN WARSAW pic. 05 Structural Variations

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