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ONE-ON-ONE ONE-ON-ONE

RIGHT ON TRACK

A TALK WITH ROBERTO PAGONE FROM ITALY’S STATE RAILWAY

Envisioned as the new gateway to the south of Italy,
Naples Afragola is moving the Bel Paese forward.

pened in the summer of 2017, the Afragola high-speed Emilia and Rome’s Tiburtina high-speed station) have become key
railway station outside Naples has become a conversation attractors for the local area. The solution we choose for Afragola is
Opiece among the transport community. The owners of Italy’s not only about resolving transport needs. It’s about rehabilitating
railway network, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), hope the design by the area around the train station, which is located to the northeast
Zaha Hadid Architects will redefine the role of the transport hub. of downtown Naples and very run-down. The hope is that with the
Roberto Pagone, RFI’s investment director for Southern Italy, explains addition of a landmark building we can attract attention and help
the project’s long-term role. build momentum to boost local development.

What features of the design stand out in your view?
What was the motivation behind the project?
It differs from your typical station as the building stretches like a
We wanted to connect the southern area of Italy in the same way we bridge over the tracks. The architect Zaha Hadid had said in the
have linked up northern Italy by rail to the rest of Europe. You can past that railway tracks are dividers; they break up the territory.
think of Afragola as a hub station that provides not only access to She wanted to have a design that links up, or stitches together, the
high-speed train service for the 900,000 inhabitants of Naples but local area. The terminal is a west-to-east passenger concourse that is
also links to a vast territory of 15 million residents in regions including suspended over the platforms like a cloud. It has over 3,000 sqm of
Puglia, Reggio Calabria and Sicily. Like Gothenburg, which operates glass panels on the roof so from dawn to dusk you have natural light,
rail links that splinter off to Oslo and Stockholm in the northern which is quite remarkable given it is a transport hub. If you think
part of our European transport corridor joining Scandinavia to the about stations and airports, they are usually designed to keep people
Mediterranean, this new station outside Naples will become a key inside a container-like structure before having them board a mode
node connecting to Bari, Messina and Lecce in the south. It will also of transport.
help link up people living on the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts.
What innovative building technologies were used at Afragola?
What was the appeal of the design created by Zaha Hadid Architects?
A large part of the exterior cladding as well as the interior walls of
When the decision was made in 2003 to commission architect Zaha the station are covered in strips of Corian® Solid Surface that permit
Hadid Architects for the project, the idea was to make a strong this curvaceous shape. The white color provides a stark contrast to
architectural statement. Recent stations that we’ve built (Reggio the surrounding landscape, which includes nearby Mount Vesuvius.

OPPOSITE: View of the high-speed rail tracks at Naples Afragola.

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