New images released of ZHA-designed KAFD Station for Riyadh Metro
New images have been revealed of Riyadh Metro's King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Station by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), a practice founded by the late Iraqi-British architect, Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, with the structure set to serve as a key interchange on the $23bn (SAR86bn) rail network in Saudi Arabia.
According to Construction Week, KAFD Staton will link Riyadh Metro's Blue Line with its Yellow Line terminus and local airport, in addition to a monorail.
With six platforms over four levels and park-and-ride facilities, the station will be a multimodal transport centre and new public space for the city, ZHA said on Instagram.
Its caption for the pictures, clicked by Instagram user and photographer Faisal Bin Zarah (@binzarah), added: "The station’s design prioritises connectivity. Predicted rail, car, and pedestrian traffic across the site has been modelled, mapped, and structured to optimise internal circulation and avoid congestion.
"The resulting configuration is a three-dimensional lattice defined by a sequence of opposing sine-waves (generated from the repetition and frequency variation of the station’s daily traffic flows) which act as the spine for the building’s circulation. These sine-waves extend to the station’s exterior."
ZHA added that the station's façade patterning reduces solar gain, and its geometric perforations contextualise the station within its environment.
"The overall composition echoes patterns generated by desert winds in sand, where multiple frequencies and reverberation generate complex repetition in natural formations," its caption continued.
"The KAFD Metro Station is composed from a subset of elements that are highly correlated through repetition, symmetry and scale to simplify technical challenges without compromising spatial quality or design ambition."