“Spaceship” Subway Station Saves Energy in Japan
Shibuya Station is one of Japan’s busiest transit hubs. Its futuristic “spaceship” design, by environmentalist and architect Tadao Ando, boasts a number of green features.
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At 67 years old, innovative Japanese architect Tadoa Ando, who designed Shibuya Station, is all for getting people out of their cars and onto public transportation.
“Japan has the most substantial transport network in the world, even without a car you can still get around, and I repeatedly point that out, but the motor industry says: “He’s making trouble for us! He shouldn’t be talking this way,” says Ando.
In designing the station, Ando consciously avoided the disorienting, labyrinthine underground passages of typical subway stations. His goal was that passengers should maintain their sense of spatial relations with the streets above. To this end, he left a large space at the center of the station open.
Ando’s design caught the attention of design magazine Wallpaper, which published an interview with him this weekend. In the interview, Ando explains some of the environmentally conscious features of the subway.
The main concept for the Tokyu-Toyoko Shibuya Station is the idea of a ’spaceship’ (an hypogenous ship floating deep under the ground). The subway station located 30 meters below ground is composed of a central void contained inside an egg-shaped shell, where we aim to create a space that explores the essence of both architecture and civil engineering fields. In addition, we also aim to reduce the station’s dependency on air conditioning equipments by letting the outside air blow into the underground space, creating a natural ventilation system that is energy saving.
Passengers in the station watch the bottom of the main escalator.
In addition to the “spaceship’s” passive energy efficiency, it’s skin contains a water cooling system. Two pictures of the station–one of an entrance and another of the central escalator–are at PlanetPinknGreen, which initially attracted our attention to this architectural feat.
Constructing Shibuya Station
Many of Tadao Ando’s other architectural projects also include the use of natural elements such as lighting. Designbuild-network gives a brief cultural history of Shibuya and explains more of the environmental aspects of Ando’s work at Shibuya station:
Ando’s architecture is known for incorporating natural elements, such as light, water and wind. Accordingly, Shibuya Station incorporates a world-first in subway ventilation strategies, whereby the hot air produced by the trains flows up through the central atrium and out into the open air. Counterpoint to this, cool air from outside flows down into the space providing natural aeration.
Water pipes lining the outer shell of the ’spaceship’ and underneath the platform circulate water, which creates a cooling effect and further reduces the station’s reliance on air conditioning. Indoor trees provide additional cooling and add an aesthetic freshness uncommon to conventional subways.
The busy crossing above Shibuya Station
Image credit: NikkeiBP and excite/ism via Japanese Design; ykanazawa1999, naoyafujii, hirotomo, and yoppy via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.
This is really impressive. The whole article gives me a real appreciation for the magnititude of the public transportation efforts which went into this project, (including the U-tube images of the numbers of people involved in the necessity for a project of this size). I am wondering if the air intake is constructed to create a clean and pleasant atmosphere. The London and Paris undergrounds have plenty of air blowing through, but it is hot and extremely dirty. Great article. Thanks.