Research On Metropolitan Rail Transit Station Integrated Designing Of The Public Space

Being the arteries of mass transit as well as a critical component of metro public transportation, metro rail transit system (subway or underground) have emerged in a metropolitan area as "life line" projects, which have weighed so much and so direct on the daily work, life and movement of a resident in the city. More and more municipal governments have come to recognize that metro rail transit is an efficient route to improve public traffic and transit environment. That’s why Beijing, within such a short time frame of six years, has made available to the public12lines of subways, such as Subway Line No.8, Line No.5, Line No.10, Airport Rapid Transit Line, for a total length of442kilometers.With growing reliance on the increasing length of public rail transit lines, the public space there is no longer a mere point of transportation function. While, on one hand, such basic elements as function, efficiency and economic returns, have translated into daily necessities and drawn less attention from the public, the public space, on the other hand, is growing closely related to the other elements of the public life, such as quality, taste, concept, information and psychological impact, all of which have attracted more and more attention from the public.Such a civil engineering project as subway is, more often than not, featured by a long construction cycle, the involvement of an assortment of hybrid professions and the magnitude of uncontrollable factors. Consequently, space designers, which normally get involved as one of the participants in the construction of a subway project at the late stage of the construction, play the role of last resort-trying to cover or remedy the shortcomings of all the other participants of various professions who normally have taken precedence over the designers. As a result, in the construction of a subway, the function of’interior design’gets retrograded in a way that creating an atmosphere within a subway station is nothing but a dream, much less such elements of a modern structure as emotion, taste and information.By analyzing the public space of a subway project in conjunction with a subway project in which I personally participated, this paper of mine tries to look into all the key points or parts that may ultimately impact on the quality and effect of interior design in the public space of a subway, recommends the precedence of the involvement of interior designers over other professionals in an effort for the designers to control the way other professions may wish to construct the subway and prejudge its possible impact from the aesthetical perspective. The recommendation is demonstrated or exemplified by designing the public space of two subway stations in such an integrated manner as desired, providing a rigorous and compelling evidence for the theory of integrated designing of a subway station and fleshing out such a theory.This paper is consisted of three parts:research and analysis in the first part, the issue highlight in the second part, and an example of an integrated design in the third part, all of which will integrate the theory of integrated designing into a system. The author wish that such an integration shall guide all the future subway projects as a standard practice or reference.