The vibrant city of Stuttgart has long been a strategic commercial hub, nestled in southwest Germany and home to companies such as Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche. Its rail infrastructure is vital to local and regional mobility, and a major upgrade has been planned since the early 1990s. Stuttgart21, as it is called, includes four new stations, 40 miles of tunnels, and 44 bridges at a cost of $9.75 billion. The centerpiece is the new main station, designed by Christoph Ingenhoven (founder of Düsseldorf-based Ingenhoven Architects) with the late Frei Otto, the 2015 Pritzker Prize laureate known for his experiments with lightweight structures. The team was chosen after a competition in 1997.
The brief was challenging. Stuttgart’s inner city is oriented roughly north–south in a valley, with an existing terminus train station at its northern tip. The Neo-Romanesque edifice by Bonatz and Scholer, completed in 1928, has 16 aboveground tracks, and the competition called for creating a through station with half as many tracks, rotated 90 degrees from the existing ones and sunk below grade through new rail tunnels parallel to the northern facade of the old station. The realignment will shorten travel and transfer times, allow for a direct airport connection, and locate Stuttgart on a Paris-to-Budapest rail link. After completion, in 2025, the aboveground tracks will be replaced with a residential district for 10,000 inhabitants.
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