Adler Passenger Terminal: Energy Efficiency, Safety, Comfort

To provide participants and guests of XXII Olympic games in Sochi with comfortable transit transportation there were realized six railway projects, the largest of which was a railway station in Adler. In the period of Games it served as “Olympic gates” accepting and attending thousands of passengers every hour. The inauguration of the terminal took place in October 2013. Russian President Vladimir Putin and the President of International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach, who was accepting this work, arrived at the station by a fast-speed train “Lastochka”. Adler station turned into a transportation hub where meet railway, air-, and roadway networks, as well as future sea ways to open Sochi not only for Russia, but for the whole world.

THE BEST COMPLEX PROJECT OF THE YEAR
The architectural concept of Adler railway station is unique – for the first time there was implemented a project of an intermodal hub, which unites several functions and where meet ways of different types of transportation means. To estimate the scale of this project, we met its authors – Alexei Danilenko (Chief architect of the project) and Eugeniy Stanov (Deputy Chief architect of the project).

Alexei Petrovich, please, share how did you start working over this project?

Work over the project of the new railway station in Adler started in 2009 and though since then it has undergone significant changes, but its basic principles were laid at that time. There were a range of town-planning restrictions at this site. Particularly, it is a very small station area, which capabilities were exhausted long time ago in both transportation and pedestrian traffic. There was a fish factory on the beach, which at that time no longer worked, but blinded the sea view, destroyed the landscape and the scale, in short, it “worked” for the space particularly unfavorably. There was a random housing estate and slipways for small marine vessels, and also a plant, which was manufacturing concrete tetrahedrons to strengthen dikes. Cement was crunching on passengers’ teeth when they were getting off trains at Adler station, and they saw the space built up with barracks. The seafront wasn’t seen at all – only signs and the sound of waves pointed that the Black sea was somewhere near.

How was originated the architectural image of the new railway station?

The first idea of the close to the sea theme was born at once: the station had to remind of a hydrofoil vessel which appeared overland after leaving marine environment. We offered a building of a concourse type, a building-bridge located above railway lines perpendicularly to their direction. One of its parts rested upon the ground from one side of the railway lines, and another one – from the opposite, closer to the seaside. The so-called concourse, the main terminal of the railway station located between supports as a linkbridge. Gradually the project was taking shape, specified, it became clear that it is possible to improve its characteristics, to make it more spacious and light, to bring it nearer to well-known western examples…

We have already visited built railway stations in the biggest cities of Europe, “felt” their composition, passenger service technology, we touched by our own hands all applied finishing agents. And this gave its results – understanding what building it must be became clear and bright. Of course, the typology of a concourse remained, but we managed to increase the volume of the main operational hall three times, to integrate a parking lot and necessary long-term day rooms into the railway station, and actually a hotel. The image of the new railway station transformed into a wave which is rolling in on the beach; the roof is also curved in such a way so that it turns into a rounded falling to the ground glazed façade upon which there are decorative colorful panels thrown “by accident” about and they symbolize spindrift.

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