Zaha Hadid Architects won the competition for The King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This organic, amorphous metro station will be located on the edge of the Financial District and will serve as a major hub between most important city’s metro lines. The station will is planned as integrated within the urban context of the district, responding to the functional challenges of one multimodal transport center as well as the district’s future vision. The smoothly curved station spreads over six platforms over four public floors and two levels of underground car parking.

In order to emphasize the building’s importance as a multi-functional, mixed-use, dynamic public space, the project of the The King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station extends beyond the simple station typology. Not only that the station will act as an intermediate space perceived through quick transitions, but it will also provide great and dramatic public space for the city of Riyadh.

The station is placed at the center of a network of pathways, sky bridges and metro lines, according to the KAFD master plan. In order to clearly delineate the pedestrian routes within the building, avoid congestion and optimize circulation, lot of attention has been paid mapping the connectivity diagrams and the traffic across the site. As a result, the internal organization resembles of three-dimensional lattice, acting as the spine for the building’s circulation, defined by a sequence of opposing sine-waves, generated from the frequency variation of station’s daily traffic flows. The waves are extended to the envelope, therefore defining the architectural concept, both in the exterior and the interior.