[photo source]
Actually comprised of four stations, the just over 1 mile (1.8km) long Nordpark Cable Railway (Hungerbergbahn) connects the center of Innsbruck, Alpenzoo (the world's highest zoo) and, naturally, a mountaintop ski resort.
[photo source]
What unites the stations and a bridge crossing also designed by Hadid (all with colleague Patrik Schumacher) is the fluid canopy designs finished in milky white glass.
[photo by david levene | source]
While the technical achievement of cladding these shapes in glass should obviously be commended, one must ask if the large, dark joints are appropriate, or at least what they are doing. Certainly these joints give the canopies a scale, a direction of sorts, and an indication of the tactile, of the manufacturing process, but something doesn't sit right with this albeit minor detail. Perhaps it's the portions where the joints don't align, as if a patchwork of pieces make up the cladding.
[photo by david levene | source]
Perhaps it's the contrast. Given that the decision was made to express a contrast between surface and joint, I can't help but wonder why and to what effect. To me, what the design, joints and all, becomes is a diagram executed at full scale for a town in the Alps. The grid, a necessary theoretical instrument even with advanced computer modeling, follows the surface of the canopies, as if we see the desktop view of the design in the 3d modeling software. In this case, the leap between computer model and built reality lacks the intermediate decision-making that makes the latter more than an enlargement of the former.
[photo source]
Links:
:: Zaha Hadid
:: Times Online
:: Guardian Unlimited
:: World Architecture News
:: dezeen
:: Funimag
:: Retrofutur
:: architectural videos*
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