2024 Galleries
The Spark Gallery pages are one of our most popular design destinations, with thousands of visitors each year. Check out some of the latest Spark entries, in the galleries below.
Galleries // 2014 Spark:Transport // Navi-Tractus
Navi-Tractus
Winner - Silver
Competition: Spark:Transport
Designer: Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Design Type: Metro Train station
Company / Organization / School: Woodbury University
Team Members: Nicholas Giglia
The Santa Monica Expo Line Station will need to accommodate large amounts of people for the years to come, within the next 50 years the population of Santa Monica is expected to grow from the current 90,000 residents up to 160,000. Tourism is expected to take a massive jump as well with Santa Monica’s increase in retail expansion inevitable. This leaves the Santa Monica residents with less space. The relationship between the ground plane and the underside of the buildings creates unique moments throughout the site, with each pushing and pulling against each other, creating and undulation in the ground and the buildings themselves. The structure itself starts with the outer frame, built with large 4’x 2’ hollow beams, designed to span large distances, and based on truss bridge design. The whole building is held together by tensile forces, with the floor being held up by the roof, which is held up by cables, mounted to the top end of the frame. In order to resist lateral movement, each connection point on the building has 3 cables, which travel in opposite directions, designed to cancel out extreme forces exerted in any direction. The colored surfaces add density to the space, with their glow influencing the area around them. These color behaviors are intended to change the atmosphere around the site as you move through, with the possibilities of colors influencing the actions that happen around.
