Trindade, Sao Bento, Campagna, Oriente Train Stations Portugal and Vasco de Gama shopping Precinct

To visit the Porto Metro and the train stations Oriente and Campagna is to participate in a metaphysical experience. In Sao Bento particularly, the emptiness scale and grandeur of the space creates an environment in which the anonymous traveller is both essential and incidental. There are fleeting moments of great beauty, in which these moving choreographic elements often remain unaware of their part. The human forms are essential design elements. The lighting and the deep spaces create the backdrop for these silhouetted human forms which enhances their abstract qualities. To stand back and observe the coming and going of the travellers is to see both randomness and purpose simultaneously. The station acts as a stage, a vessel, a conduit and microcosmic environment through which matter passes. The silver steel and pale blues resonate and are reflected in the polished floors, and in an echo of the airport in Porto, there is a sense of deep water. The whole reflects the essence of the very Catholic way in which we are simultaneously aggrandised and depersonalised in the scheme of something far more magnificent. The whole metro system was designed by by Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura and Sao Bento was designed by a student of his Alvaro Siza.

http://www.alvaroleitesiza.com

http://mic-ro.com/metro/phototour.html?city=Oporto