The main thing Wu Dan and I did today was interview Professor Zheng Gang, the Vice General Manager and Chief Architect of ECADI (East China Architectural Design and Research Institute), who was one of the people in overall charge of the Shanghai South Railway Station project. The interview began at about 2.15 and ended at about 3.00 p.m. It was relatively brief and general but very interesting, partly because of the things he was able to clear up about the design of the station, and partly because of the things he said about screens in general.

First, he gave us a sort of overview on the design concept. From this, two things became clear. First, the round design of the station allows trains to pass through it, making it different from the C19 terminus design in European cities, where trains can only move in and back out of the station the way they came in. Second, taking the passengers up above the trains to an elevated open and spacious waiting area was an important part of the design. Although we did not talk about this with him, we have observed previously how the use of glass, including for walls, helps to achieve this. Within this context, the screens are essential for enabling people to find their way.

(Wu Dan adds: Visually, the round form also has symmetry. If the traditional square form had been used, then the building and the tracks could not have been made parallel to the subway system or the existing buildings. It would have created unaesthetic angles. This obstacle disappears with the round form. The round form also has the largest internal volume and the most efficient use of space, helping to solve the problem of the Chinese New Year, a.k.a. Spring Festival crush of passengers.)

Interestingly, he maintained that there has been no problem with people finding their way around the round design, and that the numbers were on the pillars from the start. This is not what the woman at the station told us last year. Who to believe? Dan said she probably believed him, and I agree. On the other hand, he’s not likely to want to say something was overlooked or there was a problem.

He also spoke about the distinction between the round station itself and two underground shopping areas to the side. These are under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai city government, whereas the station itself is under the jurisdiction of the Railways Bureau. We talked about the fact that this is not an integrated retail-hotel-transport hub but tends to separate retail off. He spoke about how there were huge pressures of numbers in the Chinese transport system, especially during the Chinese New Year season. Therefore, the main priority of the station is processing travellers. They have to check in quite early at the moment (although the high speed trains and the increasing number of daily services is changing this very quickly), meaning there are crowds of people moving into waiting rooms and then from there down onto the train. In other words, getting people to also wander around buying things or making the station an independent destination in the city in its own right is not part of their priorities now. Nevertheless, he did speak about how this might change as the boarding process speeds up and there is less need for spacious waiting areas. These might be given over to retail in the future.

The LED direction screens (矩形点阵显示) were therefore an integral part of the design from the word “go.” However, what colours are used and so on in the lettering was not something the designers oversaw. He suggested that the colours might be cheaper because those are the most common colours used in China (something we’ll have to check, as it’s clearly not his particular area of knowledge). As for what colours were used to signify what, that was purely a matter for the station.

(Wu Dan adds: I did some price checking on the internet. Red, Yellow and Blue colours are the cheapest with LEDs. White and Green are technologically more complex and a bit more expensive, with purple and brown as the most expensive. So, what he suggested holds. )

The LCD screens, which he referred to as advertising screens, were clearly of less interest to him, and added in as the space was built according to the demands and needs of the people responsible for advertising space in the station. This seemed interesting to me, because I feel that the LCD and LEDs work together to regulate flow, and that the former are not just an optional add-on. They tell people you can wait here, where as the others point you in a direction to go.

He also said that originally the touch-screen info stands were supposed to be used a lot more and there were supposed to be many more of them. But a) there wasn’t enough money (Wu Dan adds: He felt this was the government’s excuse, mostly in order to conceal control of information. They are not willing for too much government information to be revealed to the public. Without an information filtering mechanism, information can only be released to the public after the government offices have agreed) — and b) there isn’t enough information on them or linked to them to make them of much interest. He maintained there was no problem with the technology itself (although I found the one we played with on our last visit clunky, as these things usually are).

Finally, we had a general discussion that played into our interest in the old and the new and the way in which the new becomes the old very quickly. He said that he felt the quality of the technology was crucial to whether screens look good or not — it’s all about whether the pixels are functioning and whether the screens are bright enough to work, even in daylight. (Wu Dan adds: There is also the issue of the position of the screens. They cannot be facing the sun, or the results will not be good. And the contents are also important. They have to be beautiful, otherwise they will not complement the building.) Clearly, by this logic, which I think is largely correct, each new generation of screens will make the last lot look tatty and past it.

(Wu Dan adds: Regarding why the station does not have a shopping mall as an integral part of the design, the main problem is property rights. The station itself belongs to the Railway Bureau, but the surrounding shopping malls belong to the Shanghai government. With these separate sets of ownership, it was impossible to design a large shopping area into the station itself. But from Mr. Zheng’s point of view, future development of the existing design would not be too difficult.)

After this, we checked out the Shanghai City Archives for photos and material on the old Wujiaochang. Although we did not really get anything much, I was struck by the new culture of public access at work here. We just walked in and there was no hassle. Second, I was struck by the culture of putting a lot online and making as much as possible accessible through computers. Portals at work here, as Janet might say. But this is also a public institution, like the museum, and the computer screen interface is crucial in both sites. In contrast, at the station, it is the least important kind of screen.

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