Wood as main material

The Naples Underground Central Station had been built on an urban grid designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange as part of an upgrade of the city’s infrastructure.

Kenzo Tange designed the Centro Direzionale and built a city very much in his own style, with reflective skyscrapers, a 1970s piazza, which did not work because it is so different from the rest of Naples.

One of the decisions of the project was to build the station with wood to create an organic contrast with the 1970s neighbourhood. The design of the new station was inspired by older areas of Naples.

Today, it is a place where there are many offices and commercial spaces, but at five o’clock in the afternoon, it is deserted making it an unsafe place. So, the idea of making a new station there and connecting it to the new metro line was also to try to introduce a piece of nature and a piece of the original part of Naples into this artificial part of the city. The new station is being built over the existing metro lines, replacing an earlier building that was little more than a cover for the stairs leading down to the metro platforms.

Wood is a very light material that blends perfectly with the pre-existing structures: we used the concrete structures and columns and inserted new wooden columns into them. The steel part of the concrete matches to make the base of the new columns, and then the rest of the column is entirely made of wood.

The characteristic shape of the 10,000 sqm station is made of glued laminated timber. The width of the train tracks below is reflected in the width of the undulating vaults.

Vaults are a regular feature of the studio. It is an architectural device that works with most materials because historically, vaults were made first with stone and then with ceramic, and today it is effective with wood, especially glulam because it can be moulded into any shape you want beam to be. The vaulted ceilings are also a nod to classic train stations that are often vaulted, while the shape of the station was intended to create the feeling of a “walk in the woods”.

In a way, what we tried to achieve is a kind of new organic, flowing piazza, as if we were walking through a forest when we are actually in such an artificial business centre.
The Centro Direzionale is one of the new metro stations within the new infrastructure projects in Naples designed by well-known architects and designers, such as Zaha Hadid or Karim Rashid, which are being designed for the city under the AAA (architecture, art and archaeology) motto.
However, the overall project has been delayed several times due to archaeological finds on the ground, including the design by Studio Fuksas which will now also serve as a museum after the discovery of an ancient Roman temple on the site.

The Centro Direzionale station did not have the same problem, as it is located in a newer part of the city, but construction was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The station will feature a piece of art on its ceiling depicting a face from an archaeological piece found in Pompeii, in a nod to both the art and architecture of the project’s motto.

Text provided by the architects.

But what we had created was not yet architecture, we had fabricated a stone. We made a few cuts using quarry machinery to explore its core and discovered its mass inside built with hay, now compressed by the hydrostatic pressure exerted by concrete on the flimsy vegetable structure. To empty the interior, the calf Paulina arrived, and enjoyed the 50 m3 of the nicest food, from which she nourished for a year until she left her habitat, already as an adult and weighing 300 kilograms. She had eaten the interior volume, and space appeared for the first time, restoring the architectural condition of the truffle after having been a shelter for the animal and the vegetable mass for a long time.

Text provided by the architect.

The roof is made up of two glass block vaults. The concave space under the vaults allows an interior height sufficient for the growth of small trees. In turn, the structural glass shell forms a sky with a continuous surface that avoids the projection of shadows. The glass block used has the particularity that its inner face is striated, which prevents the direct passage of the sun’s rays, reducing direct radiation on the leaves. The only interruptions on the surface of the vaults are the structural expansions that allow them to resist a possible seismic movement. These grooves are used to lead a system of small hoses through which micro-sprinklers moisten the environment at a zenith when the humidity drops.

At the ends of each vault, oriented north-south, there are projecting doors that open mechanically to produce cross ventilation when the interior temperature exceeds 24 degrees. The central support of both vaults allows the water from the sprinklers to rise by one column and by the other the electrical wiring that feeds the opening of the ventilation windows. Below, around the plants, a 1m high plinth clad in expanded metal reveals the heating system ducts that run around the perimeter, necessary to heat the room when temperatures drop below 14 degrees. These different mechanisms, added to a standard automated irrigation system, are operated simultaneously throughout the year by a digital controller, a common technology in greenhouses in the agricultural industry. For the four glass fronts that surround the square plan of the building, an extra clear glass was used, making it more translucent to the human eye, in this way the plants are more visible from the outside, turning the building into a large showcase that exhibits their inhabitants.

Text provided by the architect.