What Can Your Station Learn From Dundee?
The new mixed-use air-rights regeneration of Dundee Station opened in July 2018 on what was a great day of celebration for ourselves and our many colleagues in Jacobs and Dundee City Council. Since then the station has seen significant year on year passenger growth each month with growth figures ranging from the mid teens to over 30%.
This article is based upon a couple of articles which I have posted over recent months as the new Dundee Station emerged. This article uses recent photography taken about a month ago and also photography taken yesterday during the station's opening, which reveals the manner in which the building reflects the various CGI images which we have used to date. We will follow these up with professional photography in the near future.
My previous articles regards Development Around Stations concentrated on the station's role as an engine for growth as well as understanding that they are often in areas which suffer from a lack of access or in many cases have become rather overlooked quite litterly being on the wrong side of the tracks in locales which need to be healed, but also present enormous opportunities because of ever increasing footfall which in turn creates stress points in a city or town where all of the station's functionality must be finely meshed with that of their host's. Those articles can be read here:
The typology of the old Dundee Station is very similar to countless other stations across the UK in towns and cities of a similar size to Dundee and it offers many lessons for those stations which may now proove ripe for regeneration. Not least the leading role which Dundee City Council played in its delivery, which offers an exemplar to other local authorities via the partnership which they created with key stakeholders to realise the development.
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Much has now been written regards the opportunity for development to catalyse the ehanacement or expansion of the railway.
Over recent years we have begun to see the emergence of such an approach on the ground via enhanced stations, services, new facilities etc. Whilst development of that kind has taken place for many years in London, such developments are increasingly being considered across the country.
Such development is by its nature mixed use, which means multiple and at times competing challenges must be holistically resolved. These will often be functional or performance driven considerations, but as the railway becomes increasingly integrated within wider developments with their own commercial pressures it is also fair to consider how we give the railway its place and how we celebrate its position within the urban realm beyond mere functionality. We cannot afford today's competing challenges to become tomorrow's constraints.
A tour of many 1960's stations across the country which were born out of a period of retrenchment shows only too well how a narrow focus on functionality can be underwhelming and of course lack the flexibility that the railway now needs as it enjoys a new rennaisance. So as plans for housing, hotels, offices, restaurants and retail are considered around and above our stations how do we celebrate the railway?
From that perspective it is interesting to reflect upon what Dundee Station was like only a few years ago. Where It All Began
And also its journey through the construction process which was acheived on a complex site. The Construction Process
Each of these commercial uses has their own needs and requirements not least to provide a commercial return to enable value to the railway but critically also to enable railway enhancements and development. So a careful architectural balance developed in collaboration with multiple development partners is required to deliver that value whilst ensuring that the railway does not drown in a cacophony of visually and functionaly competing developments.
Network Rail's Station Design Principles clearly points to many functions which can underpin an architectural response to mixed use railway development. Protecting crowded places, pedestrian flow, legibility, permeability, revenue protection, access for all and wayfinding are all functions, but they also provide a rationale for public space, the sequencing and scale of spaces and architectural prompts to ease understanding and navigation through spaces.
Such factors influenced our architectural response to the new Dundee Station (designed with Jacobs for Dundee City Council) which also contains a 120-bed hotel, restaurant and office suite beyond its railway functionality. Its street level concourse is housed in a grand arch in sharp contrast to the 1960's station which it has replaced, addressing a major public space leading to both the new V&A and the city centre. The arch vaults the ECML below celebrating the station as a gateway to the city but also the rail network, leading through to an escalator hall which takes the traveller down to the platforms below. The arch in turn provides access to the route to the platforms, pick up and drop off, taxis, rail replacement buses (when needed), parking and a new enclosed cycle park.
Each part of the mixed-use development has its own public face and its own identity and conversely the new-found scale of the development offers the station an urban grandeur which it would otherwise not have. Celebrating the station as a gateway for commuters, tourists, visitors and Dundonians alike.
The railways and their stations were one of the first industries in the UK and the world to develop their own built brand identity. The Victorians bequeathed us a proud architectural heritage where many of these issues and with that successful mixed-use development have already been explored and mastered. As the railway's renaissance continues apace supported by development, 21st Century mixed use solutions can therefore learn much from St Pancras and other Victorian stations.
Drawings of the building and the masterplan are illustrated below.
