Kowloon Station and Masterplan, Hong Kong
1992-1998

Kowloon Station is part of a plan instigated in 1989 by Hong Kong's government to replace its congested airport at Kai Tak with a new £12 billion airport on the man-made island of Chek Lap Kok. The airport is linked to Hong Kong Central by a sophisticated road and high-speed rail corridor. The railway stations are envisaged as much more than transport hubs. They are intended to become platforms for compact city districts linked by rail lines that will eventually form a 193 kilometre integrated linear city sweeping north as far as the mainland city of Guangzhou.

Kowloon Station is a three-dimensional architectural solution. The design provides for passenger interchange between three separate rail links, airport check-in, taxi and other local transportation. Each element is connected by an atrium to the development above and surrounding the station. The atrium roof of the station entrance forms the focal point of the central square, the new city block. Contrasting with most airport transport systems, which are developed in an ad hoc fashion, direct road and rail links to Hong Kong's city business core had to form part of the plan for the new airport. Even for Hong Kong, a city accustomed to bold initiatives, this was a remarkable undertaking.

One of the world's largest station construction projects (1,100,000m_ of mixed use space), the brief required a new railway station, podium infrastructure works; a masterplan for an air-rights property development above the station; and an iconic ventilation building. The scheme creates a new 'city' to become the hub of the surrounding new development of West Kowloon reclamation. The project includes seven independent and sequentially phased development phases of which the station and central square are complete and a number of further schemes under construction.

Kowloon Station will be the starting and finishing point of many journeys - the first experience of Hong Kong for millions of people. The station design is a celebration of the drama of travel. Vertical movement in the station is concentrated around the concourse and rail lines. The concourse containing escalators, lifts and stairs connecting the various modes of transport, is a single space filled with movement, meeting and greeting at the core of the station. Along the rail axis, 34 escalators and 71 staircases descend 14 metres, through a grand escalator hall, from ground level to the Tung Chung MTR Line platforms at the station's lowest level. This will be the most intensively used space, with 43,500 passengers arriving and departing from the platforms at peak hours.

The concept behind Kowloon Station and its air-rights development – a project that incorporates all urban systems in one giant web – is the supremacy in the modern world of urban connectivity. On a global level, the transport system provides a high-speed link to Chek Lap Kok airport. On a micro level, the urban plan, driven initially by route planning within the station, ensures that this quarter of the city has superb internal connections. The transport super city project has resulted in prototype solutions which can be seen elsewhere in Hong Kong. It is entirely new, both in the scale and complexity of the integration of transportation infrastructure within the city, and combines the new urbanism of Asia with the European traditions of placemaking over a large section of the city.