SKYLINES
Stockholms new Metro Line, Arenastaden Station, SE 2016-2022
commissioned by FUT, Förvaltning för utbyggd tunnelbana, Stockholms läns landsting Architecture: &Rundquist, Stockholm
The starting point of the design is the coarsely screened photo of the façade of a high-rise. This template, characterized by horizontal lines and various nuances of color, will be transposed to the barrel-shaped vault of the station platform hall as a pixelated mosaic, whereby the former horizontally balcony railings will now seem like an arch construction spanning over the space. In the overarched space of the platform, the bright and dark parts of the photo unfold a suggestive spatiality that is intensified in interplay with the perspective of the long hall. The pictorial image of space and actual three-dimensional space are brought into contact with each other, thereby adding an imaginary and poetic quality to the platform. Associations with utopian urban fantasies of early Modernism alternate with echoes of speed and spatial depth. The subway as trailblazing mode of transportation, inseparable from the rise of modernity and the great cities, experiences a form of feedback with visions of its beginnings.
