Sydney’s Olympic Park Rail Station fuses tradition and modernity with its concertina of metal shells rimmed in Pilkington glass. In elevation, the station has the appearance of a giant caterpillar.
Metal and glass surfaces alternately provide gleaming surfaces and transparency. Station workings are exemplified by the glass walled lifts and kilometres of Pilkington toughened and heat-soaked safety glass balustrades that emphasise the strenuous efforts made to fillet and liberate public spaces with available light. Responding sympathetically to climate, the station exhibits lightness in all respects.
Built to withstand heavy duty use throughout the Olympics campaign and beyond, the station handles up to 30 trains and 50,000 passengers arriving and departing every hour.
The 220 metre long roof comprises 18 pairs of Vierendeel trusses topped by an origami folded steel canopy with fully glazed ridgelines.
While much of this railway station has a sense of magnified mechanical assembly, the results are anything but tedious or dull. Arriving or departing, travellers are met by lofty space, shafts of light and radiant, sparkling structure.
Olympic Park Rail Station won the 1998 BHP Colorbond Award for innovative use of steel architecture, and the 1998 Sir John Sulman Medal, from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.