The old and the new merge at Jiaxing Train Station by MAD Architects
Photo CreatAR. Courtesy of MAD Architects
Jiaxing Train Station by Ma Yansong and his firm MAD Architects is a striking example of how contemporary infrastructure can harmonize with historical context and natural surroundings. Located in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, southwest of Shanghai, the project reimagines the traditional concept of a transportation hub, blending advanced design with cultural sensitivity. The station was conceived as a “train station in the forest”, featuring a gently undulating roof covered in greenery that seamlessly integrates the structure into the surrounding parkland.
Beneath this green canopy lies a modern transport facility equipped to handle high-speed rail and daily commuters, while above, the original 1907 station has been meticulously reconstructed as a cultural landmark. MAD’s design reflects Ma Yansong’s ongoing exploration of “Shanshui City” principles, merging nature, urban space and emotional resonance. By sinking much of the functional infrastructure underground, the design frees up surface-level space for pedestrian access and public use, turning the station into a civic destination rather than merely a transit point. Jiaxing Train Station not only improves connectivity, but also offers a vision of how architecture can foster a sense of community and continuity with the past, while embracing the future. Ma Yansong shares details about the project.
Why did you decide to construct a 1:1 replica of the historic station building, while creating a new train station underground?
Transportation is one of the keys that links up the whole system and helped us to develop the concept of a museum intervened by time. I want this place to be open to everyone and enable the public to fully engage with the ecology and cultural content. By restoring the historic building 1:1, it becomes a museum of time, a conversation between the past and the future. The history of this 100-year-old train station is also the history and culture of this city. We redefined culture, subjugating history in such cases that symbolize the timeline of urban development, and projected the museum to an epitome of the old railway station 100 years ago. This kind of 1:1 restatement endowed the architecture with its own story to tell while respecting history.
Jiaxing Train Station lies beneath a giant green roof echoing rolling hills
Photo AC. Courtesy of MAD
Tell me about the history of the Jiaxing Railway Station and how you’re connecting old and new.
Jiaxing Railway Station was first built in 1907 and put into use in 1909. It was an important transportation hub on the Shanghai-Hangzhou line at that time. In 1921, when some delegates of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party came to Jiaxing by train, the railway station became an important historical witness of the great meeting. But the station was later destroyed by the Japanese in 1937.
After the restoration, the old station house becomes the History Museum of Jiaxing Railway Station, and will no longer assume the function of the main railway station house. The significance of this restoration is not in the restoration of the function, but more in the culture, whether it can trigger people’s emotional resonance for the history of the place. In this sense, the restored station house is still “real”. It still has historical images and stories, and it is very important to me that these stories have a relationship with the new space.
Immediately adjacent to the restored station house is the “floating” metal roof of the new station house. To echo the scale of the old station building, the new station building’s entry/exit platform and waiting hall have been relegated to the ground level, with only one floor above ground “fading” into the height. The black bridge canopy and the new silver platform form a continuous line, which is a metaphor for the relationship between the past and the future. In the underground of the station, I intentionally created a futuristic “time tunnel”.
Very often, for many traditional civilizations and histories in China, there is a limited concept that often does not allow the past and the new to coexist. Sometimes we duplicate old things and come up with many fake antiques. Like the old streets in so many cities, which were meant to bring out the history, turned out to be repetitions everywhere. Today, at the Jiaxing Railway Station, passengers in the new waiting room can look up to see the restored station house. The old and new station houses coexist together.
Inside the floodlit Jiaxing Train Station
Photo Aogvision. Courtesy of MAD Architects
Because the word “sustainability” has been overused and oftentimes “abused”, what is your definition of sustainability?
For sustainability, there are two aspects, one is the data ecology in terms of energy savings. It is a fairly large number. The entire roof of the two station houses is covered by solar panels. We basically designed architectures that generate electricity. All the energy goes into the city’s electricity grid, and it will power the entire area, even the underground and landscape lighting. The other aspect I consider is sustainability within the cultural context, how it continues in the long term. Respect history and heritage, but reactivate them with new power. If we think about it, the life of a building comes from the profoundness of its culture or its vitality. Looking at the cultural heritages that we are protecting today, architecture especially is preserved as a material and preserved to today as self-explainable human evidence conveying the pursuit of different time periods in history, although they each symbolize different materialities and technologies of that time.
Do you believe that the Jiaxing Train Station can serve as a model for sustainable practices for other transport infrastructure projects around the world, impact policy and change industry standards?
I think most of the railway stations in China are pretty much standardized, and it is very difficult to be innovative with all the restrictions. Innovation sits itself beyond the response to an urban condition. We have to arrive at an understanding that most of the commonalities are particularly easy to replicate due to globalization or commercialization. For architecture such as offices, residences, retail shops, airports and railway stations, the uniqueness of such designs will be rapidly copied from one place to another, across cities and countries, despite any cultural sustainability and characteristics of different urban contexts. This type of architecture should be more rooted culturally, more customized with the unique characteristics of the location in the post-globalization era – its history, culture and visions. I think this is constantly what MAD is looking for, and what we discover on each project: a new journey.
