Towards a Multi-Layered City

Strasbourg central railway station is the main railway station for passengers and is located in the city center of Strasbourg. The tram lines make the railway station quite accessible. In Gare Basse, rail roads and motorways represent a fracture in the urban space sequence from the historic center to its peripheral area. It’s a strategic point lying in the new developing corridor of Deux-rives and Port du Rhin, also in the corridor connecting the city center to north-west of suburb Strasbourg. But with railways and highways crossing in the west and east, the area behind railway station seems to be a triangle where few people come, and a place difficult for people to cross.

Gare Basse stands in a strategic point connecting old city center and its peripheral area in the west, it is prominently expected to be a new city center of Strasbourg. Recently five linear elements: highways, nature park, river, fortification and railways present as five layers of barrier in crossing Gare Basse area, they also offer a rich topology and cultural-historical background in this area.

We want to offer a new logic in constructing architecture and its environment in Gare Basse, reflecting the nature-human relationship in the modern world. The recent typology in the site gives us an inspiration of building «multi-layered city», in which future life is not only proceeded in a horizontally multi-layers, but also vertically multi-layers. Transportation methods are arranged differently by varying speed and forms, preventing the disturbances in between, various human activity space is dispersed into various layers which are interactive with each other.

This is also a concept inspired by old Chinese habitat philosophy Shan-shui. Nature is part of the human-built environment and in the meanwhile the human-built environment is part of nature. The relationship between nature and architecture is dialectical interacted. Thus we treat our architecture as part of existing topology while we utilize nature elements like water and trees to merge them into our built environment.

Gare Basse now serves mainly the railway transition function, but the opportunity for this area shows apparently more than one single aim. It is strategically the new center of Strasbourg, which means entertainment activity, commercial activity, official and residential activity will take place here. Under a new space design concept and framework, we look forward to seeing the transformation of city lifestyle in multi-layered Gare Basse area.