There’s a Jungle in Madrid’s Train Station.
by Petz Scholtus, Barcelona on 05.22.07
Image from Wikipedia.
It seems sustainability and well-being have finally reached non-places such as airports and train stations. We wrote about Madrid’s T4 airport extension with its fabulous bamboo roof that lets natural daylight in. If you travel by train (the treehugger way to go), the Spanish capital doesn’t let you down either.
They decided to grow a jungle in the main train station called Atocha, just down the road from el Prado Museum. The architect Rafael Moneo’s idea for the latest extension of the station was to make waiting more comfortable. So he decided to convert the old building into a moist and tropical greenhouse. Having been there myself I can only say it works; it's breathtakingly beautiful and leaves you all mellowed out. This covered jungle stretches out around 4.000 m2 and inhabits more than 500 species amongst which you can find carnivorous plants, goldfish and turtles. Just make sure you don’t miss the train once you venture into the jungle to enjoy the green and spot some birds. ::Atocha Train Station
that's fantastic!
That looks amazing! But if it's a new extension, why couldn't they build a glass roof? Madrid is not short of natural light and that looks like an awful lot of hgh intensity discharge lamps!
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Note from the author: it is the old building they converted into a greenhouse. The new one is housing the train platforms.
The jungle's been there for ages, I don't think Moneo had anything to do with it. It's certainly not part of the new work.
It is very cool though, well, no it isn't actually, it's very tropical! Just as humid and warm as you'd expect.
Madrid sounds like a nice place! I hate traveling by train in places where the stations are underground and dirty.
I like atocha, nice place to be waiting the train!
Here is a picture to demonstrate that the local retired people love it too (and we know that they are not easy to please ;)
That jungle was there in 1994 when I visited Spain. It's definiltely not new.
I wish they had those in Paris when I lived there. I'm sure it smells better too.
@scatter - I think this picture was taken at night. If you look at other pics, the station's main light comes in through the roof, and you can hardly see the lamps.
Plus, its a railway station - lamps are an integral part of it :)
Do all these trees mean that it could possibly rain inside the station? I'm assuming there's some humidity control thing in there somewhere...just wondering.
That's gotta be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. If only every building had lush beautiful plants and a variety of animals in it. We'd all be happier. It's truly in our genes to enjoy being around greenery. So why have we paved over everything and live in cold, concrete malls? It baffles my mind.
mayor daley,
you see this? union station, please!
the green looks kewl ...
i for one would not notice if the train is a bit late ...
hehe ...
My God!
What an Idea? And how you got this..
Great one.
As they say in another comment, this is not a new deployment, and has more than 15 years now. It was first open around 1992 afaik. Its always been a recreation of a tropical weather conditions, with humidity deployers and very nice rare species and specimens. Temperature is kept around 22 - 24 Celsius degrees, and light is received both from the crystal cover, and from sources of 200 Kw white and yello lights. (energy for this is from natural gas supply)
It features 7200 plants from 260 species from different tropical environments such as India, China, parts of Africa and Australia.
Its situated in the hall previous to large distance travel departures/arrivals, and where the AVE, fast speed trains are, thus, not affected by the terrorists attacks on March, 2004.
Definitely worth seeing if you happen to go to Madrid.
Yes, very nice station, also the T4 section of Madrid's Airport is absolutely a marvel of engineering, Well done Spaniards.
Yeah it Looks very nice, but I wonder how good for the environment this is. . .what's its carbon footprint. . .hopefully it's in balance with the O2 it'd put out