“PLAC WILSONA” A 18 METRO STATION

Year: 2004
Location: Słowackiego Street, Wilson Place
Type of investment: Public utility - subway station
Total area: 8970 m²
Team:
Andrzej M. CHOŁDZYŃSKI, Architect (AUTHOR-GENERAL DESIGNER:)
CO-DESIGN: Paweł Kornecki, Artur Chołdzyński, Tomasz Burno, J. Bartosz Krzemiński, Bogumił Kidziak
Construction: Biuro projektów Metroprojekt sp. z o.o. –Jan Domurad, Franciszek Misiurek, Urszula Gawlewicz
Inter-branch coordination: Stanisław Pęski
General contractor: Hydrobudowa - 6SA
Awards: 1st place in an open competition | The title of the "Best Metro Station in the World" at the Metro Rail Conference in Copenhagen (2008) | Distinction given by the CNN station and "The Guardian" for Plac Wilsona Metro Station as one of the "12 most impressive metro stations in the world"

“PLAC WILSONA” A 18 METRO STATION
WITH SHIFTING TRACKS
IN WARSAW, POLAND

FACILITY USE:
Serial station of I Metro line in Warsaw
Until the construction of the A19 station “Marymont” , A18 station “Plac Wilsona” was served as a terminal station, so behind the station there is designed turnouts and haulage tracts for trains.
Currently haulage tracks are being use as temporary withdrawal of the trains and allows execution of ad hoc inspections of warehouses. Over the haulage tracts the is located underground chamber intended as communal underground parking.

TOTAL AREA:
Station – Approx. 9 000. m2
Haulage tracks – Approx. 10,9 000. m2
TOTAL – Approx. 19,9 000. m2

The concept design of the Plac Wilsona metro station in Warsaw was selected in a competition between the City of Warsaw and the “Warsaw Metro” (Metro Warszawskie). The station was opened in April 2008. Architect Andrzej M. Chołdzyński and his studio, had completed all phases of the project, including the detailed design and author’s supervision of construction and furnishing works. In addition to the world award of the Plac Wilsona metro station by over 900 experts of the MetroRail Congress in Copenhagen in 2008, the title of “best metro station” was a finalist of the 2006 World Competition “Cemex Building Award” in Mexico, reinforced concrete technology, and in 2014 it was placed by CNN on the list of 12 most impressive and interesting in Europe. Metro stations are among the most difficult to design and implement public utility facilities – they are simultaneously visited by a significant number of users, potential viewers and recipients of architecture and engineering art.

Plac Wilsona metro station skilfully uses construction and engineering technology, including functional, acoustic and ergonomic requirements as integral elements of its narrative and semantics. The design and implementation of this space has many cognitive, symbolic and cultural layers. Its experience can be both completely intuitive and conscious through analytical reading. The material of this usable space is also the matter understood in terms of sculptural, painting and functional – utility. This Renaissance triad gives the same and simultaneous importance: both the concept of chromatic composition – color and light, as well as the sculptural perception of three-dimensional space and its technology, utility function and ergonomics. Such is the multi-threaded modernism of this project implemented at the beginning of the 21st century.