Airport Central Station (Perth) Successfully Negotiates a Multitude of Complex Challenges

This is a highly complex project and the delivery of such is an achievement in itself. The public and functional benefits of this project are enormous, in relation to our city’s infrastructure. It successfully negotiates a multitude of complex challenges, including the sometimes competing concerns and requirements of the various key stakeholders.

The complex and technical performance requirements of public transport infrastructure has been convincingly navigated, with a vast array of specialist consultant inputs coordinated, integrated and often expertly displayed.

Externally the curved forms sit comfortably within the context and are a friendly nod to the aerodynamic forms of the aircraft passing overhead. The glazed facades help to blur the boundary between internal and external space and allow direct visual links to the wider Perth context. This provides opportunity for a brief but critical moment to pause and reflect prior to leaving or entering Perth / Western Australia. Having the main volume of space naturally ventilated helps to strengthen this feeling of connection to the outside -further reinforcing the concept of vastness.

Open voids, expanses of glazing and vast volumes of space equate to a dramatic sense of arrival as you move up from the train platform, or down from the pedestrian link. The decompression of space is an apparent and strong concept and is further emphasised by a simple and bright material palette.

Clever consideration for patron capacity increases and future proofing for new linkages and connections ensures this project will continue to be relevant in to the distant future.