Designing Sydney Metro’s new stations

From maximising the use of natural light to level access between trains and platforms, Sydney Metro’s new stations put customers at the centre of their designs.

Meet the chief station designer and take a look behind the scenes at all the customer features, including platform screen doors.

These Australian-first glass safety barriers keep people and objects like prams away from the tracks and allow trains to get in and out of stations much faster.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Ross de la Motte, Principal, Hassell: The process of planning a rail line as large and as complex as Sydney Metro is a very comprehensive exercise. Over the years, I've heard people talk about these large rail projects as transport projects - it's a rail project, it's a heavy engineering project. Yes, it is, but it's actually so much more than that. This is transport product for the everyday person to improve their lives, and if you can make it easier for mums and dads and kids, school kids, tourists, the aged and infirm, that's what is Metro.

Rodd Staples, Program Director, Sydney Metro: In looking at the design for the stations, obviously the customer is very much at the centre of all of the thinking that we've done. We've been thinking about things like getting natural light into the station, so as soon as you're off the train, you have a sense that you've arrived in a place. You come up into the area and the station is actually part of the surrounding area. It doesn't stand out. It fits into the local community.

De La Motte: The customer is the centre of everything we do. It is absolutely true. That motif, that concept, has transformed the way transport and public realm design is delivered in Australia. Classically good design would start with getting the functionality right, but I think the great opportunity for architecture and urban design is to bring that human dimension to it. How do you build a sense of community identity and deal with all the functional requirements of a station so that when people go into a station environment that it is pleasurable? You can actually have an experience that innovates your soul and gives you happiness. So integrating engineering, architecture and landscape.

[Joyful music]

De La Motte: One of the really good things we've done on this project is to use a prototyping process to gauge both the success of our design and the construction techniques, but also to engage specifically with the local community to see how they respond to the designs before they're built.

It is profoundly important to inform the design team and the constructors of how they could actually finesse that design, but also for the travelling public to see, "Wow, this is the future. This is what's going to come and I can relate to this and it's something that I'm going to be proud of."

We developed an idea of skylights and, by doing that, the station picks up the ambience of that day. And the prismatic forms we have in those skylights are bouncing light to different parts of the station at different times of the day, so there's this ephemeral quality of daylight animating the public realm under the station, which I think is going to be phenomenal.

Staples: So, one of the really fantastic design features that we're bringing to Australia with the Metro is platform screen doors, which basically operate as a barrier between the platform and the rail track. So it keeps people safely away from the operating railway. The fantastic safety feature makes the train system more reliable and is the first time it's ever been provided in Australia.

De la Motte: Sydney Metro - it's a way for Sydneysiders to experience public place and transport and a sense of community that they will have never had before.

Staples: We're on a big journey in delivering the project, but our destination is for customers to not just be happy but to be really excited when they get on and use the train.