Spanish structure studio EMBT has accomplished the Naples Underground Central Station in Italy, contrasting its modernist environment with a wavy timber roof.
The station, which is shortlisted within the Infrastructure and transport class of Dezeen Awards 2026, sits throughout the Centro Direzionale, a enterprise district in Naples designed within the Nineteen Seventies by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.
The ten,000-square-metre constructing was designed to switch a beforehand understated metro entrance with a brand new public plaza that felt extra built-in with the encompassing metropolis.
As EMBT founder Benedetta Tagliabue beforehand advised Dezeen throughout the station’s building, the curvilinear timber cover was designed in direct response to what she known as the “synthetic” really feel of the modernist Centro Direzionale.
“Kenzo Tange designed Centro Direzionale, and he constructed a really Kenzo Tange-type of metropolis with reflective skyscrapers and a piazza, very Nineteen Seventies, very clear,” she advised Dezeen in 2021.
“It didn’t work as a result of it’s so totally different from the remainder of Naples,” Tagliabue continued. “So the thought of creating a brand new station there and connecting with the brand new subway line was additionally to attempt to introduce a bit of nature and a bit of the unique a part of Naples into this synthetic piece of the town.”
The roof of the station was constructed from arches and beams of glue-laminated (glulam) timber, that are partially supported by the present concrete construction and shelter a flooring completed in native Etna and Trani limestone.
In response to Tagliabue, the branching columns and helps of those arches had been designed to evoke the sensation of “strolling by way of a forest”, whereas referencing the arched roofs of historic railway stations.
“We wished the on a regular basis expertise of catching a prepare to really feel extra pure and welcoming, giving individuals a way of being at residence in the course of the town,” she advised Dezeen.
“We had been additionally curious about what wooden may convey to this specific neighbourhood. There’s a lot glass and concrete right here; introducing timber was a manner of bringing again a reference to nature, by way of its heat and texture,” she added.
“The roof follows the geometry of the tracks, so one thing that’s usually hidden underground turns into seen within the form of the constructing.”
The vaulted cover not solely shelters the station’s ticket obstacles and entry routes, however extends in direction of the brand new surrounding paved plaza on both facet, which faces a church to the north and incorporates new planting to the south.
Under floor, the station platforms are lined completely with striped panels in daring shades of purple, orange and yellow knowledgeable by Pompeian frescoes. This theme is sustained above floor within the type of vibrant silhouettes.
“Our station will not be immediately above archaeological stays, so we launched our personal references to that historical past, with a bit humour. The reds and yellows recall Pompeii, and figures seem and disappear throughout the surfaces,” Tagliabue defined.
“I like the concept a station can provide these sudden encounters: alongside the way in which, you uncover one thing in regards to the metropolis and really feel extra related to it,” she added.
Elsewhere in Naples, sculptor Anish Kapoor and structure studio AL_A beforehand designed two sculptural station entrances – one in weathered metal and the opposite in aluminium – as a part of a venture to attach the underground to the town’s Traiano district.
Different metro station structure lately featured on Dezeen consists of the mirrored Qasr AlHokm Metro Station in Saudi Arabia by Snøhetta and the sequence of buildings created for Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel by studios RSHP, Hassell and WW+P Architects.
Pictures by Roland Halbe
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