Souterrain, The Hague

At ground level: surface of the main market street overhead scoops in to facilitate public entry into the underground station facilities.

The main challenge of this project was to prove that architecture can have a positive effect when applied to the rigour of transport pragmatism. The building is a sandwich of a subway-line with 2 layers of parking on top and a station at either end. Its stretches out below the main shopping street, repeating its outlines, leaving a 'workspace' of 600 by 15 m approximately.

Interior view of the tram station, with an assortment of ramps, escalators and staircases criss-crossing the height and width of the space.

To overcome the boredom of a 600 m long continuous section, and to provide an answer to the question of underground orientation/isolation, every opportunity has been taken to modify the height and the width of the space, to connect physically or visually to other parts of the tunnels program, to provide views of the outside - city or sky, to link the tunnel with surrounding shops.

Usually, built parkings are victims of technical and economical constraints, the full weight of all structural and mechanical difficulties imposed upon them. In this case, the linearity of the site turned out to be an escape from this prison of practice. Ventilation: the tunnel is the duct; structure: the tunnel is the walls, the beams and the slabs.

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