Five insights into Melbourne’s new Arden Station

Arden Station – the first of five new stations making up the forthcoming Metro Tunnel in Melbourne, Australia – is now complete and ready for testing ahead of the underground rail line’s grand opening in 2025. 

Here we reveal five little known facts about the design of this new landmark for the city.

1. Underpinned by the philosophy of an ​‘open metro’, the design incorporates three central skylights that draw natural light down into the concourse and platform spaces.
2. The station entrance is defined by 15 precast brickwork archways that required a total of 104,000 locally manufactured bricks to complete.
3. Conceptualised as a skewed arch and drawing on the industrial history of the local area, the bricks don’t terminate at ground level but travel all the way down to the concourse below, using the materiality as a point of navigation from platform to ground.
4. Due to the vast scale of the arches, each was fabricated in three individual segments offsite and then carefully craned into their final connected positions on-site in 2022.
5. The above-ground buildings stand on an elevated podium, raised 1.5 meters above standard grade, offering passive flood protection designed to withstand a one-in-1000-year weather event.

The design for the Metro Tunnel is a world-class collaboration between leading design practices Hassell, Weston Williamson + Partners and RSHP.

Photography, top: Christian Pearson