The West Kowloon Terminus (WKT) will be the largest below ground terminus station in the world, and will function more like an international airport than a rail station, therefore the facility needs to have both custom and immigration controls. What is highly unusual in this facility is that WKT will have immigration domain for both Hong Kong and China in the same facility as opposed to how immigration works in a typical international airport.
The site’s prominence immediately adjacent to the future West Kowloon Cultural District and next to Victoria Harbor required a design which was completely motivated by civic demand. Enriching the challenge was the reality that there would be 400,000 square meters of commercial development on top of the station which would be auctioned off to a developer in a later date. One of the aims is to create an underground rail terminus without the feeling of being “below ground”. The design compacted all of the supporting spaces more efficiently to allow for a very large void down into the departure hall below as well as flexible apertures down to the track platforms. As the “gateway” to Hong Kong, it was considered vital to connect the station with the surrounding urban context and make one aware that whether arriving or departing – “You are in Hong Kong”.
The “baseline” scheme had segregated immigration by operation. Which seemed to make sense from a territorial point of view, however caused great inefficiencies within the planning diagram. Their location functioning well beneath the density of the future commercial spaces also optimizes the openness of the void and entrance building on the opposite side of the site. The organization of the design was inspired by converging forces all oriented toward Hong Kong - likened to the converging tracks coming into the terminus station itself. The project maximizes civic gestures both internally and externally. The station is sculpted out of the energy of these moves and strongly defines its motive to open up and focus toward Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. The culturally district of WKCD is invited into the site. A large “Civic Square” opens up toward the cultural district and is defined on the other side with its own outdoor performance amphitheatre.
The pedestrian flow into this amphitheatre continues up, accessing almost the entire roof top of the station itself in a highly vegetated sculpture garden and landscaped extension of the green below. The resultant open space is almost five times more area than an already ambitious mandate in the master plan. In summer, Hong Kong faces great weather extremes such as high temperatures, rainfalls and typhoons. The rainwater harvesting filtering process on the concave “roof” provides rainwater runoff reductions as well as providing an insulation value and solar gain reduction.
