The Riyadh Metro is a 176 km mass rapid transit system with 84 stations and 6 lines, currently under construction in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Launched in April 2014, this mega project is set to be completed by December 2024. As one of the largest transit projects built in a single phase, the Riyadh Metro represents a transformative leap in urban transportation. It embodies Saudi Arabia's commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology, sustainability, and efficiency, making it a symbol of progress and a vital part of the city's future infrastructure.
Riyadh Metro Station
Riyadh Metro Station
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Architects
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Design Management, Specification Consultant
Acoustics, Lighting, Sustainability, Transport, Civil, Fire Protection, Life Safety, Structural Engineers
Interiors Contractor, Landscape Contractor
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- Location
- Riyadh Saudi Arabia | View Map
- Project Year
- 2024
- Category
- Subway Stations
- Stories By
- Effisus
Zaha Hadid Architects
Riyadh Metro Station
Zaha Hadid Architects •
Architects
Hufton + Crow Photography
Over 18 million passengers use Riyadh Metro in the network's first eleven weeks of opening to the public
The world’s longest driverless transit system, the Riyadh Metro network spans over 176 kilometres across 6 lines and 85 stations
Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station serves as a key interchange on the network
Designed to alleviate traffic congestion, shorten travel times and improve quality of life for Riyadh’s growing population, the Riyadh Metro network is the world’s longest driverless transit system. The transformative network spans over 176 kilometres across 6 lines and 85 stations, and connects key districts, business centres, and cultural landmarks in Saudi Arabia’s capital city.
An automated rapid transport system planned by the Royal Commission for Riyadh City (RCRC), the Riyadh Metro meets the needs of both residents and visitors alike. With a full maximum capacity of 3.6 million daily passengers, the network aims to reduce the number of car journeys throughout the city and encourage the use of sustainable modes of transport.
The King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), has now served over three million passengers since its inauguration, reinforcing its role as a key interchange of the network. The station connects the KAFD terminus to King Khalid International Airport and provides access to the skybridge for the local KAFD monorail. Equipped with six rail platforms over four levels, the station seamlessly connects with bus services to create an important multi-modal transport hub for the Kingdom’s capital city, as well as new indoor and outdoor public plazas for the financial district.
Contributing to the identity of Riyadh’s new metro system, the KAFD Metro Station’s design prioritizes connectivity. The station's predicted rail, car and pedestrian traffic has been modelled, mapped and structured to optimize internal circulation and avoid congestion. The resulting configuration is a three-dimensional lattice defined by a sequence of opposing sinewaves (generated from the repetition and frequency variation of the station’s daily traffic flows), which acts as the spine for the building’s circulation.
These sinewaves extend to the station’s exterior clad in ultra-high-performance concrete panels. The façade’s geometric perforations reduce solar gain as a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional environmental sheltering within the region’s vernacular architecture. The composition of the station’s façade echoes the patterns generated by desert winds in sand, where multiple frequencies and reverberation generate the complex repetition of patterns evident in the natural world.
The KAFD Metro Station is composed as a set of elements that are highly correlated through repetition, symmetry and scale. The design was continually optimized by ZHA throughout its development to increase structural efficiencies and environmental performance while also simplifying the construction process without compromising spatial quality; seamlessly integrating the self-supporting structure of its external envelope with the station’s internal structure which supports the train platforms and viaducts.
Providing optimal comfort at minimum energy demand, the station combines effective passive design features with a high-efficiency cooling system that is powered by renewables and automatically adjusts to differing passenger levels throughout the day, while sliding door panels on each platform retain cool air within the station. The KAFD Metro Station has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification by the US Green Building Council.
Team:
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA)
ZHA Design: Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
ZHA Project Principal: Gianluca Racana
ZHA Project Director: Filippo Innocenti
ZHA Project Architect: Gian Luca Barone
ZHA Project Associate: Fulvio Wirz
ZHA Construction Support Leads: Marco Amoroso, Domenico di Francesco
ZHA Construction Support Services: Vincenzo Caputo, Abdel Halim Chehab, Marko Gligorov, Stefano Iacopini
ZHA Project Team: Marco Amoroso, Vincenzo Caputo, Abdel Halim Chehab, Lee Cubeddu, Rawan Al-Derjem, Domenico Di Francesco, David Fogliano, Manuele Gaioni, Marko Gligorov, Subharthi Guha, Alexandros Kallegias, Lisa Kinnerud, Alexandre Kuroda, Stefano Iacopini, Carolina López-Blanco, Jamie Mann, Mohammadali Mirzaei, Arian Hakimi Nejad, David Wolthers, Nicola McConnell, Mario Mattia, Massimo Napoleoni, Niki Okala, Carlos Parraga-Botero, Sohith Perera, Izis Salvador Pinto, Carine Posner, Neil Rigden, Paola Salcedo, Nima Shoja, Thomas Sonder, Vincenzo Reale, Kate Revyakina, Roberto Vangeli, Seungho Yeo
ZHA Competition Team: Alexandre Kuroda, Fei Wang, Lisa Kinnerud, Jorge Mendez-Caceres
Consultants
Structural Engineer: BuroHappold
Building Services Engineer: BuroHappold
Transport & Civil Engineers: BuroHappold
Fire Protection & Life Safety Engineer: BuroHappold
People Flow: BuroHappold
Acoustic Consultant: BuroHappold
Sustainability Consultant: BuroHappold
Lighting Consultant: BuroHappold
Façade Engineering: Newtecnic
Design Management: AECOM
Specification Consultant: AECOM
Cost Consultant: AECOM
Signage & Way Finding: Transport Design Consultancy
Safety Assessment: BH with Transsol
Development Engineer: Riyadh Metro Transit Consultants (RMTC)
Main Contractor: BACS Consortium
Independent Checking Engineer: Buro Veritas
Independant Safety Assessor: TÜV Rheinland / ISARail Group
Transit Systems: Line 1 Siemens (BACS), Line 4&6 Alstom (FAST)
Viaducts: AECOM & TriPod-ssd (Line1), Atkins (Line 4&6)
Automatic Fare Collection: Indra
Structure Contractor: Saudi Lebanese Tarouk Contracting
MEP Contractor: Zamil
Interiors Contractor: DEPA
Elevators and Escalators: ThyssenKrupp
Facade Contractor: Permasteelisa Gartner Saudi Arabia
Landscape Contractor: DEPA
Photographer: Hufton + Crow Photography
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Brand description
Zaha Hadid, founding partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and is internationally known for her built, theoretical and academic work. Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on over thirty years of revolutionary experimentation and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design.
Working with senior office partner Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s interest is in the rigorous interface between architecture, landscape, and geology as the practice integrates natural topography and human-made systems that lead to experimentation with cutting-edge technologies. Such a process often results in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.
The MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, BMW Central Building in Leipzig and Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg are excellent demonstrations of the practice’s quest for complex, dynamic space. Previous seminal buildings, such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and Hoenheim-Nord Terminus in Strasbourg have also been hailed as architecture that transforms our vision of the future with new spatial concepts and bold, visionary forms.
Currently, the practice is working on a multitude of projects including; the Fiera di Milano master-plan and tower, the Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, High-Speed Train Stations in Naples and Durango, the CMA CGM Head Office tower in Marseille and urban master-plans in Beijing, Bilbao, Istanbul, Singapore and the Middle East.
Zaha Hadid Architects continues to be a global leader in pioneering research and design investigation. Collaborations with artists, designers, engineers and clients that lead their industries have advanced the practice’s diversity and knowledge, whilst the implementation of state-of-the-art technologies have aided the realization of fluid, dynamic and therefore complex architectural structures.
Zaha Hadid’s work was the subject of a critically-acclaimed retrospective exhibition at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2006 and showcased at London’s Design Museum in 2007. Hadid’s recently completed projects include the Nordpark Railway stations in Innsbruck, Mobile Art for Chanel in Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York, the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion in Spain and the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago.
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