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The King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which was designed by UK studio Zaha Hadid Architects, has been revealed nearing completion.
Set to open early next year, the 45,000-square-metre metro station was built to serve the nearby King Abdullah Financial District, which is one of 14 giga projects under development in Saudi Arabia.
The station is one of 85 that are planned to serve the Riyadh metro, which is due to open to its first passengers next year. Dezeen observed test trains running at the station.
It will be one of the largest on the network, serving as an interchange between three lines as well as the under-construction King Abdullah Financial District monorail.
Designed by the late Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, the metro station was the winning design in a competition held in 2013.
The five-storey building contains six platforms wrapped in a steel framework supporting a series of curved, gridded forms informed by Mashrabiya screens.
A series of footbridges will connect the building to the nearby financial district, which contains 61 towers and skyscrapers by studios including Saudi practice Omrania, US studios SOM, Gensler and HOK and UK studios CallisonRTKL and Foster + Partners.
According to the studio, the internal circulation routes were created by mapping the anticipated pedestrian flows and these waves – along with desert sands – also informed the station’s exterior.
“Predicted rail, car and pedestrian traffic across the site has been modelled, mapped and structured to optimise internal circulation and avoid congestion,” said the studio at the time of the completion.
“The resulting configuration is a three-dimensional lattice defined by a sequence of sine waves, which act as the spine for the building’s circulation.”
“These sine waves extend to the station’s exterior where facade patterning reduces solar gain and geometric perforations contextualise the station within its environment,” it continued.
“The overall composition echoes patterns generated by desert winds in the sane, where multiple frequencies and reverberations generate complex repetition in natural formations.”
The King Abdullah Financial District is one of numerous giga projects being developed in Saudi Arabia as part of the Vision 2030 plan to transform the country away from an economy based on oil. We recently rounded up 14 giga projects under construction in the country.
One of the mega projects, Neom, recently unveiled its latest region, Leyja, which will feature three architecture-designed boutique hotels.
The photography is by Tom Ravenscroft.
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