This competition entry was submitted with Hannah Tribe and myself and was awarded first place. Let’s hope they go ahead with the suckah.
This proposal aims to serve the dual purpose of consolidating North Sydney’s major public transport interchange and providing North Sydney with a tangible and defining marker.
The scheme comprises a thin steel roof that links the three sites and provides a continuous covered way from the train station to the bus stops. At the top of Mount Street Palza the plane of the roof folds up into a series of moulded towers. Beneath these towers is the entry to the train station and a proposed flower market.
Along Miller Street the continuous flat roof plane is supported by slender steel columns. The density of columns varies along the length of the scheme to demarcate separate functional areas.
Plan
Elevation
At night the towers are lit from within and the perforations at the top mark the centre of the North Sydney CBD.
The Bus Stops. The bus stop is one of many functions under the continuous roof. This covered way acts as a platform that allows a variety of uses to take place beneath it; small cafes and coffee carts, fruit stalls, seating for adjacent cafes, newstands and the like.
Freestanding timetables (old school, real-time, virtual, holographic etc) and benches sit beneath the roof where required.
The Train Station Entry and covered Flower Markets. At the top of the Mount Street plaza the roof folds up to provide a canopy to the Train Station entry and the North Sydney Flower Markets. This Canopy is a steel framed structure clad internally with mirror finished stainless steel and externally in a matt white powdercoat steel.
Their formal character is derived from the vertical drama of rising out of the train station tunnels and draws on the language of North Sydney’s neglected but nonetheless beautiful precast facades. The tower forms mark the entry to the station as well as announcing this major urban intersection and terminating the Mount Street Plaza.
The reflective underside of the roof over the flower markets would create a field of flowers on the underside of the canopy. Commuters would rise out of the train station tunnel into a canopy filled with flowers. We think this would be a very pleasant way to greet the working day.
