With infratopia applied in a new station in The Hague, the station concourse has become a thing of the past. Out goes the station concourse and the tram, bus and train return to the street and the urban structure. The flows are no longer forced to converge in a single building and the transfer takes place via the public domain.

Infratopia differs from the traditional stations where all transport flows (bus, tram etc) had a place on the station forecourt or around the station concourse. It also differs from most stations built nowadays, so-called transportation hubs, where all transport flows converge in one building. Designed to make travellers comfortable, all it does is make the transport hub more complicated.

Infratopia stands for a high concentration of bundles of infrastructure assimilated into the urban fabric as a source point and a point of access to the city. It emerges as an integral component of the city, much like an urban park or market square, but then so firmly integrated as to be taken up in the urban fabric.

The Hague now has the perfect place for applying this new station type. Now that the railway terminus has been relocated to the through line, the urban barrier of tracks has fallen away allowing four neighbouring areas to be stitched together. A weighty intervention in the urban structure, it brings with it a high-powered fabric for a perfect city repair job. To build a traditional station would intrude upon the received fabric and throw up a new barrier. The new station type provides a comfortable transportation hub that can be accessed from all sides and in every way, embedded in the city.

Infratopia, to give the new station type a name, has several design premises and planning constraints. Its visual form, for example, is unrelated to the architecture of the city blocks or to the bundles of infrastructure, but relates instead to where the two intersect and to the mode of throughput and horizontal movement. The city is the structural shell in which the tissue of infrastructure is implemented and the places where these two touch are given shape. Infratopia nestles in the city thanks to a civil engineering intervention, interior cladding and infill of the public domain.

The shell, the city, can change at all times so that the 'station' is made to be transformable and flexible. Generic and specific programming of the city adds an extra layer so that transfer points have identities of their own. These places are readily identifiable for visitors and residents will also see their city in them. Items on the generic programme include office, education and café. The specific programme has a definite Hagueness about it and includes a local supermarket, a branch of Het Paard pop/rock venue and a gallery where artists from the Binckhorst area can exhibit their work. By these means the infrastructure is directly hitched to the city and to city life. Infratopia razes the border between city and transport stop or platform. It is only when boarding a train, bus or tram that you leave the city and infratopia behind.

Place of education: AAS Tilburg | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Carolien Ligtenberg, Jan Willem van Kuilenburg, Pieter Feenstra