Located to the south of Providence’s iconic State House, this project sought to reinvent station park as both a bold new transit station and urban attraction. The parcel’s central location within the city, uniquely surrounded by the city’s densely developed downtown, the sprawling residential fabric of college hill, and the classical symbolism of the statehouse, makes it both a practical and poetic location for the city’s train station.

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The design proposed to preserve the center of the lot as an open park with the western edge of the site enclosed by a long hotel running the length of Francis Street, creating a strong directional edge up toward the  State House along both the street and within the park. The southern border of the park is enclosed by a mixed-use residential building that encourages activity to spill out into the park. A dense allay of trees encloses the northern edge of the site buffering the park from Gaspee Street while leaving the park’s dramatic views to the capital unobstructed. The train station itself is developed in the form of two iconic towers that bookend the park and straddle the existing platforms allowing direct access down to the tracks. Derivative of an earlier idea of siloing program throughout the park in the form of a series of “folly-like” structures, the towers matured into a much grander urban gesture, engaging the city’s skyline and defining a “Mall-like” condition within the park that can be seen as the “station’s” formal “concourse.”