The work and the technique: Naples Afragola hig-speed railway station, Italy

550 companies, without ever interrupting the line's operation, gave way to a beautiful game of lights, shadows and volumes designed by starchitect Zaha Hadid, which envelops passengers and sews back together the land divided by the railway tracks. The geometry marks the space and pathways of this sinuous structure, which is 9 metres high and like a letter S. Materials and technology were chosen according to its shape: formworks were built ad hoc to model curved facciavista facades.

The paving is made of non-slip resin. Sunshine is filtered by photovoltaic panels, which partly fuel 200 km of electric cable, and spread by large windows (6,400 square metres), supported by steel façades (8,800 tons) and concrete (34,000 cubic metres) that, together make up a bridge, a unique 500x40 metre body, with an approximately 30 metre-span, with Corian® lined opaque and transparent walls (20,665 square metres).

Overall, 31,018 square metres of internal area, 8,783 square metres of commercial ones, 1,346 parking spaces, 15 bus spaces and 73 for taxis. An architectural and engineering challenge, due to its unusual shape, the work was built with an an extremely low environmental impact, besides the photovoltaic panels (20,000 square metres), ventilation combined to cooling and heating systems reduce energy consumption to the minimum, the junction serves up to 32,700 passengers every day, with 3 million people using it.