- Jul 20, 2016
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A new railway station is under construction in Mexico, and the architects (bless them) looked at ways to work with the environment. Lo and behold, it turns out the Mayans knew a thing or two. You've got to click the link to the architect's site and see the action rendering of the construction process. Living in a very warm climate, I have great admiration for the use of the natural convection process of warmer and cooler air.
www.aidia-studio.com
AIDIA STUDIO I Tulum Train Station
The station sits in the beach resort of Tulum, in the Mexican Caribbean, along the Riviera Maya. The primary goal in the design process was to push the sustainability agenda to the foreground and to find in that optimized performance a narrative which would speak about the qualities of...
www.aidia-studio.com
The climate in the Yucatan peninsula is tropical with rain and high humidity in the summer, to deal with this extreme weather, we envisaged a large open lattice roof, glazed in strategic locations, enabling public semi-open spaces that function without mechanical ventilation. The sunlight piercing through the roof, projects complex geometric patterns on the walls and floors of the station, a play of lights and shadows travelling throughout the space and evoking different sensations on the users.
The openings on the gridshell respond to the radiation exposure throughout the day, smaller openings on the zenith reduce heat gains at the hottest hours and larger openings on the sides let air and light in when the temperature descends. This passive strategy negotiates the amount of radiation exposure and the amount of natural light let into the station.
The aerodynamic geometry of the roof promotes the suctioning of the ocean breeze and funnels it through the station. This is key to create a comfortable atmosphere for users without the need for mechanical ventilation.
The roof structure is a steel gridshell cladded with Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete (GRC) panels on the top and laminated wood panels below. The resulting motives on both outer and inner sides are reminiscent of Mayan traditional geometrical patterns.
Throughout the design journey, we aimed to infuse the station with some of the best-known features of Mayan Architecture; symmetry, monumentality, geometrical alignment, and the use of limestone are all constant treats in Mayan architecture. As such we have attempted to honour this heritage by rescuing that same spatial quality just reinterpreted it in a contemporary way.
