Description of project by Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra
The contest organized by the Department of Construction and Planning of the City of Geneva and developed in three eliminatory phases, is inserted squarely in what has been called re-qualification urbanism in front of, perhaps already unsustainable, expansion urbanism. In the idea of working in the transformation of the city, which will undoubtedly be the near future of our activity; rather than designing new objects, we will try to transform those already built. To improve parts of the city that were already built, to transform the city from within, to reinvent itself instead of expanding. To clarify where before there was insufficiency, confusion and chaos. And maybe to subtract instead of adding. In short, not to propose anything new but to use what already exists, giving it a new meaning, a different semantic context.
The main objective of the contest was to optimize the operation of the existing Station in terms of its underground extension, which is planned in two phases between 2025 and 2050. As well as providing a new identity to the Cornavin group through the new configurations of the open spaces that surround the station, with the proposal of the new North façade that, as an urban portico, freely and expressively crosses the entire street along its 400 meters granting unity, coherence and recognition to the main building Geneva station and offering a new space of reception, intermediation and transition between the station and the city.
Another of the fundamental aspects of the project has been to propose new pedestrian public spaces including the enhancement of the constituent elements of the place, both the built and historical heritage and the surrounding urban fabric, through the reorganization of the main flows of traffic -transviations, buses- in order to promote the efficiency of public transport and intermodal exchange, eliminating private traffic and promoting sweet mobility.
On the other hand, the reorganization of the vertical connection systems between the different levels of the station in its rear façade has allowed us to release the Place de Montbrillant from obstacles, now getting the new covered gallery in line with the new and necessary North facade of the Cornavin Station.
These new additions allow us to present a proposal for intervention, dense, complex and specific, basically defined by these objectives:
a) Provide Pôle Cornavin with a new identity through the new spatial configuration of Place de Cornavin and Montbrillant and the new North façade of the station.
b) Find a unification of the intervention through a homogeneous floor for the whole.
c) Achieve a great urban permeability through the proposal of new passages and the reinvention of existing ones now converted into really urban passages: animated, bright, comfortable and attractive.
d) Propose new pedestrian public spaces: an extensive dual, mineral and wooded space for the Place de Cornavin and a new pedestrian space and highly qualified for the Place de Montbrillant.
e) Improve intermodality between the different means of transport, ensuring an efficient and comfortable operation of intermodal exchanges.
A project that puts the accent on the urban dimension of architecture, on the exercise of civic architecture with a strong urban implication, on the conviction that the future of cities resides in their public spaces and shared territories and, finally, in the idea that the city is much more important than architectures understood as isolated events.
A proposal that far from formal exhibitionism seek to claim that essential architecture, measured and sensible, that really is necessary, that responds to the needs, specificity and uniqueness of the place where it intervenes, always at the service of people and society .
