YAC competition: Sardinia Cultural station.

Elini, Italy

Awards: Honorable Mention of Young Architecture Competition (YAC)

Can a station be a reason to slow down?

An abandoned railway becomes the starting point for a cultural route through Elini. The station links the town, Parco Carmine, and the Old Mill through a journey between past and future. New spaces for exhibition, gathering, and daily use meet the old buildings, giving the infrastructure a role beyond arrival and departure.

View of the proposed linear cultural station extending above and beside the existing stone buildings — Time Resort Culture Station / Old and new in one landscape
The station introduces a new route through the railway setting. Rendering developed in collaboration with Zemin Yan.

01 / Time as a route

Choose a direction through the town.

Visitors arriving by train can follow a route toward the past or the future; entering from the Old Mill reverses the journey. The proposal connects landscapes and buildings through a sequence of cultural stops. The railway becomes a thread through the town, with time providing the organisation for the itinerary.

Territorial diagram linking the station, historic sites, and landscape along several routes — 01 / An itinerary through Elini
The diagram places the station within a wider network of destinations and routes.

02 / The new station

Weave a new route around the old buildings.

The linear station responds to existing structures and the shape of the site. A plaza, marketplace, cafeteria, and outdoor theatre introduce places for local life alongside the visitor route. The plan and axonometric locate those activities within an intervention that connects several fragments of the town.

Axonometric drawing of the new station threading between existing buildings — 02 / A line within the town
The axonometric shows the new intervention in relation to the surrounding fabric.

First-floor plan of the cultural station with existing structures and new connections — 03 / First floor
The ground-level organisation brings the new route into contact with the old station and its surroundings.

03 / Across the levels

Let the visit unfold in more than one way.

From an exhibition on the Nuraghic Age, visitors can continue toward the Giudicati Age exhibition or a tower framing a view of the church. The journey reaches commercial spaces and an incubator, linking cultural interpretation to contemporary daily life. Upper floors extend the itinerary through exhibition, work, and places to pause.

Second-floor plan showing the separated arms of the cultural route — 04 / Second floor
The upper route follows the linear form around the existing buildings.

Third-floor plan and program legend showing office and coffee spaces in the two arms of the station — 05 / Third floor
The portfolio’s third-floor drawing completes the sequence of plans, locating office and coffee spaces at the upper level.

04 / Old and new

Keep the encounter visible.

Colonnades and new enclosures stand beside the stone fabric and the railway. Their meeting is part of the experience: a visitor can read the town’s existing buildings while moving through a new cultural setting. The courtyard view makes this relationship tangible at the scale of a walk.

New curved volume set above the stone arches of an existing building — 06 / Above the stone fabric
The new enclosure follows its own geometry while retaining a visible relationship to the older building.

Courtyard view of railway tracks and a locomotive beneath a new elevated volume beside a stone building — 07 / Along the tracks
The courtyard perspective, recovered from the portfolio, places the visitor between the railway, old masonry, and new circulation.

Arrival / Culture / Everyday life

A station that belongs to the town.

The project uses a journey through time to connect a visitor’s itinerary with spaces for local use. Railway heritage becomes the setting for an ongoing cultural life.

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Location: Elini, Italy
Studio: Competition
Instructor: Jingjing Lei
Collaboration: Zemin Yan, Ruoxi Li
Recognition: Honorable Mention of Young Architecture Competition (YAC)

Next projectHefeng Collective Housing.