6 Metro stations, 23km metro line, stabling + maintenance, dive structures and servicing facilities, in a landscape setting.
Designed in collaboration with CPB, Acciona, Cox, Aspect, Alison Page, Aurecon and TTW, the project is a catalyst for the development of Western Sydney’s future Parkland City. Conceived as a connector to the 11 billion dollar Western Sydney International Airport, the design proposal delivered a family of six metro stations that speak to the richness of Country, reflect the spirit of people and place, build a culture of sustainability, and celebrate simplicity, legibility and identity through design.
Our schemes will fit each station precinct within its context, with an overarching concept of regenerating the Country that we inhabit. The stations are designed with the future in mind, so they can become a centrepiece of placemaking and urban development. SMWSA will be memorable civic architecture, capable of standing alone in its own right. The stations have a distinctive yet unassuming presence around which each of the future communities can evolve.
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We have established a unique sense of place at each site, composed of a series of characteristics that respond to each context, acknowledging, appreciating, and interpreting Country. Country has been WestGo’s starting point to understand place and allow design concepts to emerge; appreciation of a place’s history and nuances has imbued our design thinking at every level. In a series of varied contexts across the linewide precinct, our designs respond to existing, emerging, and future built forms. Weaving through these conditions is an attitude towards blending with and acknowledging those built forms.
From an awareness of heritage architecture at St Marys, to acknowledging the emergent Western Sydney Airport Terminal building, to allowing for future built form to occur at Orchard Hills, Airport Business Park, Luddenham and the Aerotropolis, our approach embeds respect and flexibility. The stations and precincts are a cohesive set with consistent design approaches cross the line while integrating specific variations to articulate the personality and contextual relevance at each station. These variations are informed by our Connecting with Country approach, which sees each station as a member of the same modest family with its own unique character.
Orchard Hills. St Mary’s (above).
Luddenham Road
Airport Terminal
Business Park
St Mary’s
Orchard Hills
St Mary’s Station is an existing heavy rail station on the T1 Western line. The addition of a cut and cover Metro station with an attached cross over to the existing station will connect the SMWSA line to Sydney’s existing rail network via a new interchange that will function as a second gateway for visitors to the region. The Metro connection to the new Western Sydney Airport and the interchange with Western Sydney’s rail network are both catalysts for St Mary’s to grow into a key strategic hub. The Metro site, extended for construction opposite the station, incorporates significant development opportunity to contribute to the area’s uplift.
The Orchard Hills Station will be located one stop south of St Marys Station, east of Kent Road and north of Lansdowne Road, in a planned compact local centre comprising residential, mixed use and commercial use spaces within the future Western Parkland City.
The design is inspired by the Cumberland Plain remnant ecological communities and Connecting with Ngura (Country) themes, stories and directions. The themes of plants, animals and people are also encompassed by the ‘Ecologist’ character in the family of stations.
We have created a generously sized parkland plaza that integrates with the station’s relocated and compacted concourse centred over the platform within the rail cutting. This will extend the natural landscape into the heart of the future community.
Luddenham Station is located two stops south of St Marys Station, close to Luddenham Road north of the Warragamba water pipeline. The elevated viaduct station supports the Western Sydney Science Park’s future research and knowledge-based employment along with mixed-use residential development.
WestGo has configured the station to reduce the extent of services pods in the northern building, consolidate vertical transport and circulation to visually open the entry to the precinct’s key approaches. Our configuration also simplifies the architectural elements to create a horizontal composition allied to the viaduct form.
The Airport Business Park Station is located one stop north of the Western Sydney International Airport Terminal within the future commercial, industrial and retail employment hub. The site sits between Airport Drive and the future Rail Service 2 (RS2) line, with an east-west pedestrian bridge over the rail and roads that connects the station to the Business Park.
Configured as an elevated concourse aligned to the bridge over the ground-level platform, WestGo’s design consolidates the built form by relocating the southern services building to the northern end of the station. This allows removal of the southern services bridge found in the reference design, and allows inclusion of an expanded forecourt suspended between the two structures that enables a future bridge width expansion.
WestGo explored two solutions for the design of Airport Terminal Station during the RFP Stage. The first is the WestGo preferred scheme, which widens the platform to 12m within the proposed Station Boxes and Tunnels (SBT) station box extents to maximise the potential of the station to best serve the specific needs of airport customers. The second is a conforming design that maintains the 10m platform width, track alignment and SBT tunnel positions. The content of Section D primarily focuses on the 12m preferred scheme and key design moves, with Section D.3 outlining the key differentiators when needing to maintain a 10m platform width.
The Aerotropolis Station is located at the southern end of the SMWSA alignment in the heart of the future Western Parkland City. The station addresses the northern edge of Innovation Square within a Western Parkland City Authority (WPCA) master-planned city grid bound by Innovation Drive to the south, city streets to the north and east and a major green spine along the western frontage preserved for future rail lines that will connect to the station to create a future transport hub. The station city block incorporates future development connected to a pedestrian laneway network subject to the WPCA design and development processes ahead.
WestGo’s sustainability approach for the stations and precincts is underpinned by the objective to improve liveability and whole of life sustainability reinforcing the Western Parkland City place making approach. Starting with Country to drive holistic sustainability across SSTOM, measures have been taken to embed sustainability in all design phases, construction and maintenance.
Sustainability is one of WestGo’s five principles that encapsulate the overarching design philosophy – that is to minimise built form. Not only does this create a more natural light and ventilation approach but it also ensures we reduce our impact on the environment through lower embodied carbon and greater connection and legacy for the local community.
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