Long overshadowed by cars and planes , trains can seem like a bygone mode of transportation. But as some urban-dwellers can attest, rail-based travel isn’t just efficient; it can also allow riders the chance to experience architecture on a grand scale before they even arrive at their terminus—just ask anybody who has looked up in awe at the celestial ceiling in New York’s Grand Central Terminal or romped under the wrought-iron ribs of St. Pancras, in London. Of course, not all train stations are created equal. In recent years, cities from Anaheim to Arnhem have undertaken ambitious transit projects to enhance their aging depots, installing futuristic design concepts, improving function, and making them altogether more airy and light-filled. Here, AD has rounded up nine stunning examples that prove some train stations are compelling destinations in their own right.
Shown: In 2014, international architecture firm HOK teamed up with Parsons Brinckerhoff for Orange County, California’s Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. Distinguished by its striking diamond-gridded steel shell, the 67,000-square-foot structure was inspired by the classical lines of iconic stations such as Grand Central Terminal, as well as the geometry of modern airplane hangars.
“It’s a civic monument to life, and to the courage of New Yorkers,” says Santiago Calatrava of his newly built World Trade Center Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan. With its white marble walls and floors, the Oculus—an 800,000-square-foot structure with a 355-foot-long operable skylight—serves as a serene backdrop to some 200,000 daily commuters.
Birmingham New Street Station, the central hub of the U.K.’s second most populous city, opened last year and was designed by the international architecture practice AZPML. Like something out of the imagination of Daft Punk, drop-shaped sections of curving glass allow light to flood the bustling retail-lined atrium.
An undulating profile defines the four-story Arnhem Central in the Netherlands, which was devised by the Amsterdam-based firm UNStudio. The 234,000-square-foot terminal, which opened late last year, was designed to accommodate 110,000 daily passengers and is topped by a dramatically twisting roof, allowing for vast column-free expanses of nearly 200 feet.
Set in the heart of the Dutch city renowned for its bold collection of modern structures, Rotterdam Central Station stands out with an arresting design by Benthem Crouwel Architects, MVSA Architects, and West 8. The grand entrance to the hub is topped by an angular stainless-steel roof that points like an arrow toward the city’s high-rises.
A soaring glazed roof composed of 218 diamond-shaped panels now crowns the Haag Central Station in the Netherlands, which reopened on February 1—marking the end of a two-phase construction project that began a decade ago. Benthem Crouwel Architects designed the 215,000-square-foot hub, which also features expanded retail options and new entrances.
Located between Rotterdam and the Hague, the Dutch city of Delft now boasts its own impressive transit hub, designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects and local firm Mecanoo. The Municipal Offices and Train Station replaces a 1960s viaduct that bisected the city and connects to city hall with passageways united under a dazzling vaulted ceiling that resembles an abstract map.
Up to 30,000 commuters pass through Graz Main Station, in Austria, which was reconfigured last year by the Vienna-based firm Zechner & Zechner Architects. The structure now features an arched-glass roof (dubbed “the wave”) and a 492-foot-long work by artist Peter Kogler that lines the new passageway linking the eastern and western sides of the city.
Seven thousand tons of steel went into Vienna Central Station’s geometric roof, a collection of overlapping rhombuses above a series of open platforms. The terminal, which was designed by architectural firms Theo Hotz Partner, Atelier Albert Wimmer, and Atelier Ernst Hoffmann, sits at the nexus of four major rail lines and Vienna Metro’s rapid transit systems in the Austrian capital.
